EIGHT STARRED REVIEWS!
“Wrenching.”—School Library Journal, starred review
“Extraordinary.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Nuanced.”—Booklist, starred review
“Engrossing.”—The Bulletin, starred review
“Riveting.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Mesmerizing.”—BookPage, starred review
“Gripping.”—Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Compelling.”—The Horn Book, starred review
How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit “revolutionary suicide” by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious cults in American history.
Using riveting first-person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming reveals the makings of a monster: from Jones’s humble origins as a child of the Depression… to his founding of a group whose idealistic promises of equality and justice attracted thousands of followers… to his relocation of Temple headquarters from California to an unsettled territory in Guyana, South America, which he dubbed “Jonestown”… to his transformation of Peoples Temple into a nefarious experiment in mind-control.