Julia Scheeres

I'm old enough to remember this horrible news story. Scheeres uses thousands of pages of letters, memos and diaries to look beyond the sensationalism and try to understand what drew people into the situation in which they would commit "mass suicide." In doing so, she completely changed my view of what happened. The people who followed Jim Jones to Guyana did so for many reasons; some were concerned with racial and gender discrimination in the U.S., some were socialists, some were so poor show more and/or forgotten by society that this was their first taste of affection, belonging and order in their lives. The group Jones started in Indiana and consolidated and grew in California emphasized equality and justice. But Jones deliberately moved the group to Guyana to separate them from any social safety net and gain complete control. The book emphasizes how completely isolated the Jonestown group was from civil society. Jones controlled what they ate, whether they ate, whom they could write to. They had no phone connection to the outside world and their mail was censored. Most did not want to die, and many resisted Jones' commands right to the end. Many drank the poison believing it was just another "loyalty test" like those Jones had conducted before. Jones had used violence, drugs and starvation to completely remove the will to live in those who seemed the most strong and resilient. This book actually reminded me of "The Fear," a book I read recently about Robert Mugabe's attempts to terrify and manipulate his own people. Scheeres also emphasizes the Guyanan govts attempts to intervene. Neither the Guyanans nor the Americans did everything they could to help the people who were essentially prisoners in Jonestown, but the Guyana govt. comes off better than the Americans and much better than they are usually portrayed in popular versions of this story. show less

Working from recently released documents and tapes seized in Guyana after the mass murder/suicide in Jonestown, Scheeres has created a moving account of the People's Temple by focusing on several individuals who followed Jim Jones (some to their deaths). Scheeres treats this tragedy with acute sensitivity and a remarkable lack of judgmental rhetoric. She clearly spells out how Jim Jones initially drew people to his church and how his message shifted over the years from one of openness and show more integration to one of megalomania and paranoia. Scheeres also reveals a disturbing lack of action on the part of both the US and Guyanese governments whose dismissive attitude towards Jones' public threats of "revolutionary suicide" helped set the scene for his final solution.

As the narrative wound toward its tragic conclusion, Scheeres did a wonderful job of showing how Jones worked his followers, using drugs, violence, and starvation to keep them compliant and apathetic to his discussions of mass suicide. Scheeres' research makes it clear that Jones had a long range plan to kill all his followers and that he used drugs, threats, and both physical and psychological torture (beatings, sensory deprivation boxes, sleep deprivation, and a constant barrage of Jones' rantings broadcast day and night) to desensitize his followers to that danger. Ultimately, Scheeres did a wonderful job of placing the blame on Jones and on the upper levels of the People's Temple leadership, those who saw Jones unraveling and yet either did nothing or actively abetted his insanity. Using their own words (from interviews with survivors and from journals recovered from Guyana), Scheeres portrays the hundreds who dies in Jonestown as victims, horribly betrayed by a man who, through deception on every level, had gradually taken over every aspect of their lives.

Highly recommended! show less

the writing here is really excellent and this story is an important one to tell. she tells it really well; i'm impressed by her writing.

i am super uncomfortable with parts of this book that equate the white author's lived experience with that of her black adopted brother. she says things like "we are black" and while i don't discount the bullying and ostracizing she surely faced for her close relationship with her black brother, it certainly isn't the same as what he endured. not in society, show more not in her community, not in her school, not in her church, not in her family. i know she does this to show us how close they were, and i don't doubt that they were, that maybe even she was david's only lifeline (limp as it was) in all of those places. and that because she did choose david over those things (usually, except in high school), that she suffered, too. i'm not saying she didn't. i just don't think she could ever understand how his blackness felt and was used against him, especially as they so studiously avoided any real discussion of race or of their parents and what the hell was happening there. (what was happening is that her "christian" parents adopted 2 black boys so they could look righteous and holy but abused them physically and emotionally and made a terrible life for them.)

i am so disgusted with these so-called christians who use religion as a shield to hide such awfulness in behavior and character. i'm sure other religions have people like this, and atheists and agnostics as well, but it seems so overwhelmingly christian to claim belief in god and goodness and then to brutally abuse people - children, most especially - in the name of that belief. it's so ugly and gross and i hate it so fucking much. i appreciate, in fiction, when it's the christians who are hypocrites, but in nonfiction like this, it just makes me want to be a vigilante and turn violent. but none of that is about this book specifically. so: the parents in this book are bad enough, and then the christian reform school they are sent to was so over-the-top i would think it was unbelievable if this was fiction. (and i looked up the place. there are other books written and a documentary about the abuses that took place there.) in spite of that, i raged at the very end of the book when the author says that she thinks the worst injustices that david was victim to had occurred at this place. her worst injustices may have been there (and maybe not; i'm not here to rank her sufferings) but david's were so clearly in her own family that rejected and used him for the 14 years of his life before being sent to that place. to almost completely ignore this abuse (except for the time her dad broke david's arm) shows she either never really understood him or perhaps wasn't emotionally willing to delve into that or to risk further fracturing whatever relationship she has left with her family. but it's tone-deaf to make the statement she did. and it shows what is missing from this book: a real excavation of what her parents did to him - and yes, even to jerome, in spite of (or maybe because of) who he became - and the misery they made him live with. she may have been david's only light, but she never shone that light on any of the real issues that he was dealing with, and it seems like she still isn't willing to do that where her family is concerned.

when she tells her own story is when this book is strongest, for me. because i can overlook the assumptions she makes that she can tell us about david in a way that i just don't believe she can. but she can tell us what she felt and went through, and what she thought of growing up with david and jerome and the small town and religion and abuse and so forth. her story weaves in with david's, and that's when this book really resonates. david's story is told through hers, and if she had left off the proclamations about him and his life, and left us to make our own conclusions, this would be an even stronger book, and my main issue with it would probably not exist.

even with this huge (to me) problem, this book is still pretty incredible. maybe it shows my own privilege or whiteness or something to be able to still rate a book this highly in spite of this issue. (i'm also surprised and disappointed that she used the words "gypped" and "retarded" when neither were at all necessary.) without these things, i'd probably be rating this book 4.5 stars for the writing alone. show less

"I feel that as long as there's life, there's hope. That's my faith....I look about at the babies and I think they deserve to live, you know?...I think we all have a right to our own destiny as individuals."
--Christine Miller, the only dissenting voice heard on a tape recorded during mass-murder suicide in Jonestown.

How could the Holocaust have happened? Why did people kill one another so easily during the reign of the Khmer Rouge? Why would someone blindly follow a person or an ideology show more enough to want to kill or die for the cause?

Jonestown is an important lesson in how how groups of humans can start down a very slippery slope which leads them to places unimagined. Jim Jones, faith healer and cult leader, grew a group of followers and lead them down to Guyana to start a new socialist society and in the process convinces close to a thousand people to murder their own children and babies and then kill themselves.

This book by Julia Scheeres focuses on materials released by the FBI and on the stories of a few of the survivors at Jonestown. They include a young African-American man who was taken off the streets by the cult, a father and son who joined and then was torn apart by the cult, and an elderly woman who along with her sister had been followers of Jim Jones for years. Not everyone profiled here makes it out--a good deal of information about what happened was from Edith Roller, a secretary and recorder of events. Scheeres did an outstanding job of blending story and hard research.

This book will break your heart. You'll see how people's hope and community which started out with big ideals could be twisted by a leader. You learn how families turned against one another and how Jones kept people in line through intimidation, punishment and lies. How he manipulated people towards his ultimate goal of "revolutionary suicide." You'll learn about the failed and successful escapes from Jonestown.

I grew up in Northern California and remember the events from the news. The cult--the People's Temple was not that far away in San Francisco. I learned in this book how many politicians in San Francisco turned a blind eye to Jones because of what he could do for them. He was even given a political appointment in the city. No one at the time could fathom what ultimately unfolded.

By the way, while the People's Temple started as a Holy Roller Faith Healing Christian cult--Jones himself saw contradictions in the Bible and while he claimed to be God on Earth, he later tied his cult to Socialism. I find it interesting to wonder if this Cult were around today if it would lean more towards a Tea Party agenda as at the time it sort of grew up out of the sixties. Either way--the lesson here is to watch your step lest you find yourself with a cup of koolaid in your hand wondering how you got there.

One of the best books I've read this year. show less