This Book Is For Those Who Can’t Look Away From Cults

I love books about cults. I have for years, and any opportunity to get my hands on one, I’ll take. I don’t care if it’s fiction or nonfiction; I love thinking about how one person or group of people can influence an entire crowd. How is it there are people who truly believe, for example, that fluoridating water is harmful when decades of science tell us otherwise? How is it that there are people who believe a book with LGBTQ+ characters sitting on a bookshelf in a library is far more harmful to their children than, say, the guns that are brought into schools? Why and how do cult leaders gain attention and leverage that power to get other people to do things that, in their right and logical minds, they never would have otherwise done?

That’s at the heart of Candace Fleming’s latest work of nonfiction, Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown. Fleming is a master of writing for tween and teen audiences, and her latest book does just that by situating the story of Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple within the context of the young people who were brought into the cult (most frequently through no choice of their own).

I admit to knowing little about The Peoples Temple and Jones himself before diving into Fleming’s book. It is among the few cults in America with left-leaning politics. But this book had me crawling into bed early every night to sneak in just a few more pages. Despite knowing how it all ends, I needed to know the backstory to how exactly hundreds of people “willingly” drank poison in the wilds of Guyana to their untimely deaths (or as Jones called it, “revolutionary suicide”).

Fleming pulls readers in immediately, describing Jones’s childhood in rural Indiana. He spent a lot of time in his young years studying the rhetorical styles of significant leaders–both those who were good and those who were far from it–and through practice, he was able to learn how to capture people’s attention through his speaking. This helped him get his start in Indianapolis, where the first Peoples Temple came to be.

What drew a congregation in those early years was Jones’s belief in social justice and equality. He grew a following largely of Black community members in those early years, both in part because of his church’s location and because of those beliefs that spoke to social injustices faced by Black people in the 1960s and 70s. And in those early years, Jones practiced more of what he preached than not. But the moment he realized his power, Jones became an authoritarian figure in The Peoples Temple, rather than a partner in the work of change.

Two of the main characters of Fleming’s book are Hyacinth and Zip, sisters who began to follow Jones in Indianapolis. Despite some reservations the sisters shared about the church during times of change–first with Jones’s announcement that the Temple would be moving to California, then later, its movement to remote Guyana–we see where and how they were pulled into the promises of not just a better, more just life. They were taken in by the idea that they could be part of that change themselves, pouring goodness into the world around them. This ended poorly for one of the sisters, while the other sister walked away a wholly transformed person after witnessing piles of dead bodies in Jonestown. Their story was one I found especially fascinating, as Fleming renders them wholly complex people making decisions from the best places within themselves. They weren’t “brainwashed,” as so often the narrative goes. They were humans trying to live a life that aligned with their values, and they questioned those decisions at numerous crossroads.

It is evident how much research and effort Fleming went into developing this book. It is not sympathetic toward Jones, but it extends deep empathy for those who believed in his message.

In the context of history, the Jonestown massacre was not that long ago. It happened a few years before my time, but the story itself has been interwoven so deeply into pop culture that it’s hard to contextualize its recency. As Fleming emphasizes, no one willingly “drank the Kool-Aid,” as the saying goes. Indeed, whether or not people had free will at all in Guyana is a question that leans more toward a no than a yes. There was also no Kool-aid–it was a different concoction all together.

The recency of Jonestown was highlighted even more recently, thanks to the current US administration, which has taken the liberty of sending people to a brutal prison in El Salvador without due process (a right not limited to “just” American citizens but to all people). When Senator Van Hollen traveled to meet with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, several people on social media spoke about the trip being eerily reminiscent of what Senator Leo Ryan did when he traveled to Jonestown to check in on his constituents living there.

Ryan did not make it back home from the trip. Neither did nearly 900 members of The People’s Temple. We can hope that the story goes a different way for Garcia, one of the current victims of the MAGA cult agenda to which he had no interest in participating.

The remains of Jonestown stand today. It hasn’t been developed, and it likely never will be.

Fleming’s book is a must-read for those curious about Jim Jones, The Peoples Temple, and/or about the kinds of cults America brings to the table. Where many of America’s historical–and contemporary–cults rely on rugged individualism, what made Jonestown especially unique was its focus on communal living, on socialist values, and on its belief in an egalitarian society.

Perhaps what also makes this book worth reading right now, even if cults or Jonestown aren’t your usual flavor of reading, is that it’s a story crafted with the kind of empathy and compassion that we can all use right now. Yes, this story is brutal, and yes, you will read about a mass murder-suicide. But the voices that Fleming highlights from within the Temple highlight her skills as a writer and reiterate that most people who find themselves in cults like Jonestown don’t do it because they’re dumb, weak, or easily persuaded. They do it because these groups offer a promise for a better life amid difficult and tumultuous times.

In an era where compassion fatigue is at an all-time high, any opportunity we can find to build those skills of empathy and grace is only going to help us get through–and none of that is to say we need to agree with or condone the choices other people make (indeed, many are downright terrible). But stories like this one remind us that at the end of the day, we’re all humans doing our best to be just that: human.