A YA nonfiction book I could not put down!
⛪️
Jim Jones was a kid during the Depression. It was this and his parental abandonment that helped shaped who he ended up becoming. He was allowed to run wild around town and ultimately taken to church, where he felt he found his calling as a preacher. Over the years Jones gets married, becomes a popular preacher with multiple temples in the United States and ends up settling a socialist cult in the jungles of Guyana, South America. It’s there he creates a compound called Jonestown. After several months of settling there, Jones is able to indoctrinate and murder more than 900 people and call it revolutionary suicide. How was he able to achieve this?
🛐
This was such a wild ride! I think this is the most engrossing nonfiction book (not bio or memoir) that I’ve ever read. @candaceflemingbooks could teach a master class in writing nonfiction that feels like fiction and cults have always been an interesting topic for me. The fact that this event really took place still feels unreal and reading this only blows my mind even more. I literally cannot wait for this title to release April 29. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CW: religious bigotry, sexual assault, drugging, alcohol, drug abuse, drug use, torture, violence, assault, death, murder, suicide, parental abandonment, domestic violence, adoption, racism, microaggressions, kidnapping, gun violence, gaslighting, adultery

A riveting, harrowing account of cult leader Jim Jones and Jonestown written for young adult readers. This non-fiction book traces the beginning of The People's Temple, a church started by Jim Jones in Indiana, to the rain forest in Guyana in South America, where over 900 people died. Informative and engrossing, the book is most interesting when it talks about the children and teens who were apart of the People's Temple and their lives before and after the shocking event that changed their lives and the world forever.

This was fabulous! I couldn't put it down. Obviously, we know what the end result was going to be (the 900+ deaths), but I read the whole things in one day because I wanted to know what was going to happen to the folks who Fleming profiled in the story. I think this presents the topics in a relevant way for teens. Highly recommended!