by Candace Fleming
First sentence: “On Friday evening, November 24, 1978, CBS broadcast a special hour-long report: ‘The Horrors of Jonestown.'”
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Content: There is murder, gaslighting, drug use, drinking, and adultery. It’s in the kids’ history section of the bookstore, though I’d be careful about giving it to young kids.

This is, ostensibly, a biography of Jim Jones, and how he founded the People’s Temple, moved the bulk of the members to Guyana, and then murdered them all. Fleming – who is a remarkable non-fiction writer – follows Jones from his early childhood through the tragedy in Jonestown in 1978. She isn’t unkind to Jones, but she also doesn’t whitewash his life, his paranoias, and later his narcissism and his drug use. She talked to survivors of the tragedy and got perspectives from former insiders about what life was like in the Temple community.

I found this one a hard book to read. Not because it was poorly written – quite the contrary. It was hard because the subject matter was a difficult one. Jones wasn’t a good person, and yet he had ideals that I agree with: the idea that the poor should be helped, or that all races should be treated equally. And yet, he took those good ideals and warped them into something oppressive. I can’t imagine what an adult biography would be like if this one for kids was so difficult for me to get through. I did finish it, though, and I appreciated Fleming’s frankness and her willingness to write about difficult subjects.