A YALSA EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION WINNER • A SCBWI GOLDEN KITE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Horn Book, Booklist, The Bulletin of The Center for Children’s Books, School Library Journal
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.
And Fleming heart-stoppingly depicts Jones’s final act, persuading his followers to swallow fatal doses of cyanide—to “drink the kool-aid,” as it became known—as a test of their ultimate devotion.
Here is a sweeping story that traces, step by step, the ways in which one man slowly indoctrinated, then murdered, 900 innocent, well- meaning people. And how a few members, Jones’ own son included, stood up to him… but not before it was too late.
Author
Candace Fleming
Candace Fleming is the award-winning author of more than fifty books for children and young adults. The recipient of the American Library Association’s Children’s Literature Legacy Award and Margaret A. Edwards Award, she has written many acclaimed nonfiction titles, including Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown, winner of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; Murder Among Friends: How Leopold and Loeb Tried to Commit the Perfect Crime, which received four starred reviews; The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, also a YALSA recipient; and The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia, which won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was recognized as a Sibert Nonfiction Honor Book. Her beloved picture books include Giant Squid, a Sibert Honor Book, and Oh, No!, which received three starred reviews.
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