The Road to Jonestown

I "enjoyed" the first half of the book.

Everyone has heard of Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass suicide. However I don't think many people, my age, know the full story.

The funny thing is that his early days of church on the mainland USA feels eerily close to a church that I used to attend. I'm pretty sure I would have joined his church/cult had I encountered it at the right time.

One thing that shocked me is that Christians often trust their pastors implicitly. Jim Jones was extreme and used techniques more akin to false psychic healers to grow his congregation. Those outside of his inner circle believed that his healings were true.

The inner circle allowed his lies to proliferate because they believed in his ultimate secret mission of a creating a socialist paradise.

This is a really dangerous combination, a secret ideology, fake mystical signs and wonders plus a cult like religion.

This covered the first half of the book. Even "respectable" christian preachers thought Jim Jones was a socially conscious preacher who fought for integration and equity even after the end of the cult.

The second half of the book describes the move to Guyana, how that happened and the descent into madness. It's really shocking, much worse than I knew or expected. It gets pretty shocking towards the end and makes for uncomfortable reading.

On reading this book I wondered if Jim Jones suffered from the same delusions that Orson Welles described; that people who practice fake physic activities start to believe their own bullshit. When they accidentally guess what people are thinking, or what is meaningful to strangers, they start to believe that they really have become psychic or that god has told the that information.

Who knows. I think that cult leader is a kind of mental illness that is attractive to other people to follow.

An eminently interesting book, a perfect description of cult creation and it's consequences though probably difficult to comprehend fully unless you know similar Christian churches.

I listened to this on Audible, primarily on my commute back and forth to work. The quality of the audiobook was outstanding.

Jeff Guinn, who previously wrote on Charles Manson, sifted through thousands of FBI records concerning Jonestown and the People’s Temple, interviewed survivors and defectors, and even visited Jim Jones’ hometown in Indiana to interview his friends and family. The final product is a rich understanding of exactly how Jones’ church transformed from a small, storefront parish in Indianapolis into the Jonestown farming settlement in Guayana.

The book is roughly divided into three parts. The first examines Jones’ parents and his childhood in Indiana. The second part describes the formation and ascendency of The People’s Temple. The third part sheds light on Jonestown, the murder of U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, the infamous mass suicide, and the aftermath.

While I did not find the lengthy detail of Jones’ parents and his childhood all that insightful, my favorite part concerned the rise of Jones’ church. In light of the events at Jonestown, the collective memory (as well as how most professional historians have approached the subject) has focused on the sensational and horrific aspects of the assassination of Ryan and the death of 908 church members in Guayana. This book provides the long view of The People’s Temple, which actually got its start as a small storefront church in downtown Indianapolis during the late-1950s/early-1960s. Here Guinn rightly portrays Jones as a champion for African-American civil rights and a stalwart of the integration movement in the city. Jones served an almost exclusively black parish and painstakingly helped each member deal with a extremely discriminatory and racist bureaucratic system in Indianapolis—from helping them resolve problems with electric bills to persuading local restaurant owners to integrate their lunch counters. Jones billed his church as a place where individuals could find traditional Christian worship services, but also focus on the “here and now” and find help for their day to day problems. Jones was also a devout discipline of socialism, and believed that Christianity and socialism were not only compatible, but best poised to improve the overall human condition.

From Indianpolis, Jones convinced many of his Indianapolis parish to move to Mendocino County in California where he started his first socialist commune. He later expanded to locales in Los Angeles and San Francisco. All of these churches were “Rainbow families”—that is, the congregation was represented by blacks, whites, Latinos, and Native Americans who were fully integrated in almost every sense of the word. It is also apparent that those who were in the lowest socioeconomic rungs of society—the elderly, the indigent, and the poor—benefitted materially from Jones’ church. However, some of the earliest defectors were among the more wealthy people who saw their property, bank accounts, and other possessions seized by the church through shady legal proceedings.

Without going into too much other detail, the last third of the book concerns Jones’ mental deterioration and drug addiction. He became increasingly paranoid both on the eve of forming Jonestown in Guayana, and more so once isolated within the jungle enclave.

Overall, I thought this was a fascinating book but thought that it would have benefitted if the author had spent more time delving specifically into Jones’ state of mind and what conditions may have caused his paranoia, etc. Highly recommended for those the least bit curious about Jim Jones, Jonestown, and his church and who would prefer a book that presents a fairly balanced perspective.

4.5 stars

There are two services this book provides you. The first is that it lays out, very clearly, the entirety of Jim Jones and his career from start to finish. The information presented is through and incisive. You will come away with all the facts you need, which is all that most nonfiction books aspire to.

But the truly important thing this book does is it helps you to understand the members of the Peoples Temple. You see what there was in Jones's offerings that drew people in, and you understand why they stayed. I even found myself thinking, at several points in the book, that the community they created was accomplishing exactly what I want to accomplish politically and spiritually: they really were feeding the hungry, they really were helping the poorest of the poor, they really were creating a group that was committed to overcoming racism. They did a lot of good for the communities they were in, and it's easy to see why outsiders, especially San Fransisco political figures, accepted them for what they appeared to be on the surface.

But then of course there's all the other stuff Jones mixed in with that. The faked faith "healings," the degree of control he had over the members, the punishments and the sacrifices he demanded, the sexual abuse of the women in the church, the terrible way he treated his ever-faithful wife. A lot of it is horrifying, and yet I understood for the first time why people stayed anyway. I could imagine how they justified it all to themselves even as I was horrified by the things they went through. The book recreates Jones's paranoid worldview to the point that the mass suicide does seem like a natural outgrowth of everything that came before. It's all disturbing and all so human.

I have read the author's book on Charles Manson, which I think lacked some sort of human sensibility where a pure, non-autistic read on Manson would have helped the book; instead, I feel it contained a lot of research that was collated, rather than displayed as a coherent mass.

That problem is not available in this book, where I would have liked to see a more human approach, perhaps a display of more feelings than there are, but regardless, I was first and foremost very interested in reading about how Jones' relationship with his parents was shaped, perhaps most interestingly the one between himself and his mother.

His mother really did not care for him, for being a mother, and bore a massive grudge against her husband, who was unfit for manual labour, and spent a lot of time down the local bar. Jones grew up with his mother constantly making up stories, wishing she were somewhere else.

From the book:

Lynetta had absolutely no natural maternal instincts. She’d never wanted or intended to become a mother. Later, she would weave a tale of becoming ill and falling into a fevered vision of approaching “the Egyptian river of death.” As Lynetta was about to cross, perishing in the process, the spirit of her mother appeared and told her that she could not die, because it was her destiny to give birth to a child who would become a great man. Whether it was due to destiny or desperation, in the fall of 1930 Lynetta announced that she was pregnant. She gave birth in the Crete farmhouse on May 13, 1931, to James Warren Jones. But besides saddling Lynetta with even more responsibility, the arrival of the child changed nothing.

Real poverty:

The rest of Lynn wasn’t automatically condemnatory of such bare-bones housekeeping. In this community of no secrets, everyone knew the other Joneses were subsidizing Jim and Lynetta. The lack of furniture, household amenities, and traditional meals could be chalked up to pride. Jim and Lynetta probably didn’t want to take one more cent from his relations than they had to. But Lynetta dreamed of a finer life. She fancied herself a writer and thought she’d been one in previous lives. She wanted conversation devoted to grand things, reincarnation and progressive, nonconservative politics, not boring chatter about drapery and pie recipes. So she spurned invitations to visit other women in town and never invited them into her home. Even out in public, shopping or attending the Wednesday night community movie, Lynetta rarely spoke to anyone, and when she did kept conversation minimal. Many felt she was taking on airs she didn’t deserve—the woman couldn’t even keep a decent house. But Lynetta simply didn’t have anything to talk to them about and felt there was no basis for friendships. Lynetta couldn’t avoid spending time with the rest of her husband’s family. Without them, she and her husband and son would have been insolvent. But she was sensitive to every word they spoke to or about her, always anticipating insults. It was particularly galling that they constantly called her “Lynette” rather than “Lynetta.” When they’d first met her, she still called herself Lynette much of the time, and that was how they continued addressing her. They meant no offense, and certainly would have obliged if she’d asked them to call her Lynetta. But she didn’t, preferring to assume deliberate insult. Constantly frustrated, unable in any tangible way to fulfill her ambition of being a great lady, Lynetta got through her dreary days by nurturing resentments, and imagining confrontations where she triumphed over enemies through wit and courage. Lynetta later wrote colorful accounts of these fantasies, substituting self-aggrandizing fiction for fact. But during these early years in Lynn, her only audience was her small son. Jimmy’s two earliest and most enduring lessons from his mother were these: there was always some Them out to get you, and reality was whatever you believed.

There were some very clear signs of Jones' abilities - and inabilities - from the freaking get-go:

Jimmy briefly claimed that special powers were conferred on him by the Almighty. Challenged to prove it, he rigged a cape, probably a towel, climbed on top of the garage roof, and yelled for everybody to watch him fly. The other kids never believed Jimmy would actually jump, but he did. Instead of flying, he hit the ground hard and broke his arm. Afterward Jimmy was unabashed. He apparently still believed in his new powers even if nobody else did, but he didn’t mention them again. Around the same time came the animal funerals.

Also, he kept talking openly about sex in all kinds of very weird and incorrect situations. An example:

Some nights, Jim would summon Ronnie and launch into long, graphic conversations about sex. He was determined that the boy should know every possible detail. In a 2014 interview, Ronnie joked that, had Marceline been willing, Jim might very well have offered a practical demonstration. The ten-year-old dazzled his pals with his newfound knowledge. They agreed that Ronnie now knew more about sex than any other kid in their elementary school.

Early on, Jones really wanted a racially integrated society where diversity and socialism were key. He actually didn't care much about a God, any God, but socialism was the thing. He really wanted to help the poverty-stricken people, even if it meant he had to walk over corpses to get there.

Some of the Peoples Temple actions were really powerful:

Jones, at this stage in his life, was both visionary and pragmatic. Economic segregation was deep-seated in Indianapolis and would have to be challenged from the bottom up. Most corporate owners would be impervious to any requests. He couldn’t bring sufficient political or economic pressure to bear on them, and his talent for empathy wouldn’t work because they had nothing in common. But small businessmen, operators of mom-and-pop companies, were different. Jones understood their fierce pride in achieving ownership, and fear of losing what they’d worked so hard to attain. So he began his crusade with white-owned neighborhood cafés and restaurants. Most routinely turned away prospective black diners, though in passive-aggressive fashion rather than openly denying service based on race. Blacks who arrived and asked to be seated, even in places with many empty tables, were informed that advance reservations were required. If reservations were then requested, the blacks were told that every table at that time was already spoken for. Jones and Marceline went to medium-priced restaurants where they regularly dined as a couple or together with the white Haldemans, but this time they brought African American friends. When informed that reservations were required, they replied politely but firmly that this was never the case before. If no table was currently available, they’d wait to be seated. Occasionally, they finally were, though the service provided and food served was always deplorable. Most often, they were left standing until the restaurant closed. Either result suited Jones. The next day, he’d be back by himself, asking to speak to the owner. If the owner wasn’t on hand, Jones kept returning, as often as necessary until he was granted a meeting. Then, in a reasonable tone, Jones would ask that the restaurant begin accepting African American guests, and provide the same quality of food and service to them that was enjoyed by whites.

At first he was always refused and told to mind his own business. Jones would politely ask that the owner reconsider; he’d be back to talk again. During a second conversation, Jones worked to establish common ground. He’d grown up poor, he understood how hard it was to even start a business, let alone keep one going. Jones wasn’t pressing integration to cause trouble; he was suggesting something that would actually boost revenue by bringing in new customers. Everyone would benefit. Of course, continued refusal to integrate would result in a third visit, and this time Jones would bring a crowd of blacks and whites with him not to dine but to protest. He’d regret the necessity of it, and of course it would be picketing of a peaceful nature. Still, the restaurant’s white customers would have to maneuver through polite protesters asking them to withhold their business until this restaurant served diners of all races. It would be embarrassing; income would be lost. Jones’s sincerity was obvious. No one dared call his bluff. When the first few restaurant owners capitulated, Jones rewarded them by appearing with lots of new customers, most of them Temple members. He was shrewd, usually arriving at off-hours rather than busy ones, providing the restaurants with additional traffic without inconveniencing or driving away their regulars. Bills for these meals were paid out of the Temple general treasury, so cash-strapped members of the church enjoyed dining out for free.

It was Marceline who first proposed a “rainbow family.” Why not adopt multiple children of different races? She and Jim would love the children, of course, and try to be the best possible parents, but there would be the added benefit of the Jones family being a constant, unmistakable example of racial harmony. Her husband was enthusiastic. A black baby was the obvious choice, but never in Indiana history had a white couple adopted an African American infant. The Joneses would investigate that, but decided to begin with an Asian child. Since there were none available in their home state, the Joneses traveled to California, where they met and adopted two Korean orphans, a four-year-old girl they named Stephanie and a two-year-old boy renamed Lew. The children fit perfectly into their new home. Their adoptive parents adored them, and so did the congregation of Peoples Temple. Their new grandmother was less welcoming. Lynetta still didn’t care for kids. Almost at the same time Stephanie and Lew arrived, Marceline learned that she was pregnant. Marceline loved children, and the thought of giving birth to one of her own was thrilling. The pregnancy was uncomfortable from the start, but Marceline was a trained nurse and knew how to take care of herself. As she came closer to term, she cut back on outside activities and had lots of bed rest.

Temple women were glad to pitch in and help with Agnes, Stephanie, and Lew. The church continued involving its children in all sorts of wholesome activities, and in May 1959 there was a weekend outing to the zoo in Cincinnati. Jones led the group, which included his children but not their mother, who was in her final weeks of pregnancy and stayed home to rest. It was a rainy weekend. Thunderstorms lashed the region, but the Temple trip to Cincinnati went on as planned. They carpooled in a variety of vehicles. Everyone had a fine, if wet, time, and on the way home Stephanie Jones rode with one of the congregants. On the way, they were hit squarely by a drunk driver—Stephanie died instantly. Further pain was inflicted on the little girl’s grief-stricken parents when they prepared to bury her. Stephanie was Korean, and no Indianapolis cemetery would allow her body to be interred next to whites. Only a black mortician would prepare the dead girl for burial. The Joneses were directed to “Negro cemetery sections,” which were in the worst areas. It was still storming when Stephanie was laid to rest. The hole dug for her coffin was half full of water. Jones sobbed as Stephanie was lowered into the muck. He would recall later, “Oh, shit, it was cruel, cruel.”

All in all, this book deeply delves into how people followed Peoples Temple, and makes it easy to understand, while avoiding Jones' cause celebre in exploitative ways, even though his personality and those around him make up for that in spades, being extreme in a slew of ways.

Overall: very good, very non-blaming and still with a clear agenda that's palatable.

I have read the author's book on Charles Manson, which I think lacked some sort of human sensibility where a pure, non-autistic read on Manson would have helped the book; instead, I feel it contained a lot of research that was collated, rather than displayed as a coherent mass.

That problem is not available in this book, where I would have liked to see a more human approach, perhaps a display of more feelings than there are, but regardless, I was first and foremost very interested in reading about how Jones' relationship with his parents was shaped, perhaps most interestingly the one between himself and his mother.

His mother really did not care for him, for being a mother, and bore a massive grudge against her husband, who was unfit for manual labour, and spent a lot of time down the local bar. Jones grew up with his mother constantly making up stories, wishing she were somewhere else.

From the book:

Lynetta had absolutely no natural maternal instincts. She’d never wanted or intended to become a mother. Later, she would weave a tale of becoming ill and falling into a fevered vision of approaching “the Egyptian river of death.” As Lynetta was about to cross, perishing in the process, the spirit of her mother appeared and told her that she could not die, because it was her destiny to give birth to a child who would become a great man. Whether it was due to destiny or desperation, in the fall of 1930 Lynetta announced that she was pregnant. She gave birth in the Crete farmhouse on May 13, 1931, to James Warren Jones. But besides saddling Lynetta with even more responsibility, the arrival of the child changed nothing.

Real poverty:

The rest of Lynn wasn’t automatically condemnatory of such bare-bones housekeeping. In this community of no secrets, everyone knew the other Joneses were subsidizing Jim and Lynetta. The lack of furniture, household amenities, and traditional meals could be chalked up to pride. Jim and Lynetta probably didn’t want to take one more cent from his relations than they had to. But Lynetta dreamed of a finer life. She fancied herself a writer and thought she’d been one in previous lives. She wanted conversation devoted to grand things, reincarnation and progressive, nonconservative politics, not boring chatter about drapery and pie recipes. So she spurned invitations to visit other women in town and never invited them into her home. Even out in public, shopping or attending the Wednesday night community movie, Lynetta rarely spoke to anyone, and when she did kept conversation minimal. Many felt she was taking on airs she didn’t deserve—the woman couldn’t even keep a decent house. But Lynetta simply didn’t have anything to talk to them about and felt there was no basis for friendships. Lynetta couldn’t avoid spending time with the rest of her husband’s family. Without them, she and her husband and son would have been insolvent. But she was sensitive to every word they spoke to or about her, always anticipating insults. It was particularly galling that they constantly called her “Lynette” rather than “Lynetta.” When they’d first met her, she still called herself Lynette much of the time, and that was how they continued addressing her. They meant no offense, and certainly would have obliged if she’d asked them to call her Lynetta. But she didn’t, preferring to assume deliberate insult. Constantly frustrated, unable in any tangible way to fulfill her ambition of being a great lady, Lynetta got through her dreary days by nurturing resentments, and imagining confrontations where she triumphed over enemies through wit and courage. Lynetta later wrote colorful accounts of these fantasies, substituting self-aggrandizing fiction for fact. But during these early years in Lynn, her only audience was her small son. Jimmy’s two earliest and most enduring lessons from his mother were these: there was always some Them out to get you, and reality was whatever you believed.

There were some very clear signs of Jones' abilities - and inabilities - from the freaking get-go:

Jimmy briefly claimed that special powers were conferred on him by the Almighty. Challenged to prove it, he rigged a cape, probably a towel, climbed on top of the garage roof, and yelled for everybody to watch him fly. The other kids never believed Jimmy would actually jump, but he did. Instead of flying, he hit the ground hard and broke his arm. Afterward Jimmy was unabashed. He apparently still believed in his new powers even if nobody else did, but he didn’t mention them again. Around the same time came the animal funerals.

Also, he kept talking openly about sex in all kinds of very weird and incorrect situations. An example:

Some nights, Jim would summon Ronnie and launch into long, graphic conversations about sex. He was determined that the boy should know every possible detail. In a 2014 interview, Ronnie joked that, had Marceline been willing, Jim might very well have offered a practical demonstration. The ten-year-old dazzled his pals with his newfound knowledge. They agreed that Ronnie now knew more about sex than any other kid in their elementary school.

Early on, Jones really wanted a racially integrated society where diversity and socialism were key. He actually didn't care much about a God, any God, but socialism was the thing. He really wanted to help the poverty-stricken people, even if it meant he had to walk over corpses to get there.

Some of the Peoples Temple actions were really powerful:

Jones, at this stage in his life, was both visionary and pragmatic. Economic segregation was deep-seated in Indianapolis and would have to be challenged from the bottom up. Most corporate owners would be impervious to any requests. He couldn’t bring sufficient political or economic pressure to bear on them, and his talent for empathy wouldn’t work because they had nothing in common. But small businessmen, operators of mom-and-pop companies, were different. Jones understood their fierce pride in achieving ownership, and fear of losing what they’d worked so hard to attain. So he began his crusade with white-owned neighborhood cafés and restaurants. Most routinely turned away prospective black diners, though in passive-aggressive fashion rather than openly denying service based on race. Blacks who arrived and asked to be seated, even in places with many empty tables, were informed that advance reservations were required. If reservations were then requested, the blacks were told that every table at that time was already spoken for. Jones and Marceline went to medium-priced restaurants where they regularly dined as a couple or together with the white Haldemans, but this time they brought African American friends. When informed that reservations were required, they replied politely but firmly that this was never the case before. If no table was currently available, they’d wait to be seated. Occasionally, they finally were, though the service provided and food served was always deplorable. Most often, they were left standing until the restaurant closed. Either result suited Jones. The next day, he’d be back by himself, asking to speak to the owner. If the owner wasn’t on hand, Jones kept returning, as often as necessary until he was granted a meeting. Then, in a reasonable tone, Jones would ask that the restaurant begin accepting African American guests, and provide the same quality of food and service to them that was enjoyed by whites.

At first he was always refused and told to mind his own business. Jones would politely ask that the owner reconsider; he’d be back to talk again. During a second conversation, Jones worked to establish common ground. He’d grown up poor, he understood how hard it was to even start a business, let alone keep one going. Jones wasn’t pressing integration to cause trouble; he was suggesting something that would actually boost revenue by bringing in new customers. Everyone would benefit. Of course, continued refusal to integrate would result in a third visit, and this time Jones would bring a crowd of blacks and whites with him not to dine but to protest. He’d regret the necessity of it, and of course it would be picketing of a peaceful nature. Still, the restaurant’s white customers would have to maneuver through polite protesters asking them to withhold their business until this restaurant served diners of all races. It would be embarrassing; income would be lost. Jones’s sincerity was obvious. No one dared call his bluff. When the first few restaurant owners capitulated, Jones rewarded them by appearing with lots of new customers, most of them Temple members. He was shrewd, usually arriving at off-hours rather than busy ones, providing the restaurants with additional traffic without inconveniencing or driving away their regulars. Bills for these meals were paid out of the Temple general treasury, so cash-strapped members of the church enjoyed dining out for free.

It was Marceline who first proposed a “rainbow family.” Why not adopt multiple children of different races? She and Jim would love the children, of course, and try to be the best possible parents, but there would be the added benefit of the Jones family being a constant, unmistakable example of racial harmony. Her husband was enthusiastic. A black baby was the obvious choice, but never in Indiana history had a white couple adopted an African American infant. The Joneses would investigate that, but decided to begin with an Asian child. Since there were none available in their home state, the Joneses traveled to California, where they met and adopted two Korean orphans, a four-year-old girl they named Stephanie and a two-year-old boy renamed Lew. The children fit perfectly into their new home. Their adoptive parents adored them, and so did the congregation of Peoples Temple. Their new grandmother was less welcoming. Lynetta still didn’t care for kids. Almost at the same time Stephanie and Lew arrived, Marceline learned that she was pregnant. Marceline loved children, and the thought of giving birth to one of her own was thrilling. The pregnancy was uncomfortable from the start, but Marceline was a trained nurse and knew how to take care of herself. As she came closer to term, she cut back on outside activities and had lots of bed rest.

Temple women were glad to pitch in and help with Agnes, Stephanie, and Lew. The church continued involving its children in all sorts of wholesome activities, and in May 1959 there was a weekend outing to the zoo in Cincinnati. Jones led the group, which included his children but not their mother, who was in her final weeks of pregnancy and stayed home to rest. It was a rainy weekend. Thunderstorms lashed the region, but the Temple trip to Cincinnati went on as planned. They carpooled in a variety of vehicles. Everyone had a fine, if wet, time, and on the way home Stephanie Jones rode with one of the congregants. On the way, they were hit squarely by a drunk driver—Stephanie died instantly. Further pain was inflicted on the little girl’s grief-stricken parents when they prepared to bury her. Stephanie was Korean, and no Indianapolis cemetery would allow her body to be interred next to whites. Only a black mortician would prepare the dead girl for burial. The Joneses were directed to “Negro cemetery sections,” which were in the worst areas. It was still storming when Stephanie was laid to rest. The hole dug for her coffin was half full of water. Jones sobbed as Stephanie was lowered into the muck. He would recall later, “Oh, shit, it was cruel, cruel.”

All in all, this book deeply delves into how people followed Peoples Temple, and makes it easy to understand, while avoiding Jones' cause celebre in exploitative ways, even though his personality and those around him make up for that in spades, being extreme in a slew of ways.

Overall: very good, very non-blaming and still with a clear agenda that's palatable.

I have read the author's book on Charles Manson, which I think lacked some sort of human sensibility where a pure, non-autistic read on Manson would have helped the book; instead, I feel it contained a lot of research that was collated, rather than displayed as a coherent mass.

That problem is not available in this book, where I would have liked to see a more human approach, perhaps a display of more feelings than there are, but regardless, I was first and foremost very interested in reading about how Jones' relationship with his parents was shaped, perhaps most interestingly the one between himself and his mother.

His mother really did not care for him, for being a mother, and bore a massive grudge against her husband, who was unfit for manual labour, and spent a lot of time down the local bar. Jones grew up with his mother constantly making up stories, wishing she were somewhere else.

From the book:

Lynetta had absolutely no natural maternal instincts. She’d never wanted or intended to become a mother. Later, she would weave a tale of becoming ill and falling into a fevered vision of approaching “the Egyptian river of death.” As Lynetta was about to cross, perishing in the process, the spirit of her mother appeared and told her that she could not die, because it was her destiny to give birth to a child who would become a great man. Whether it was due to destiny or desperation, in the fall of 1930 Lynetta announced that she was pregnant. She gave birth in the Crete farmhouse on May 13, 1931, to James Warren Jones. But besides saddling Lynetta with even more responsibility, the arrival of the child changed nothing.

Real poverty:

The rest of Lynn wasn’t automatically condemnatory of such bare-bones housekeeping. In this community of no secrets, everyone knew the other Joneses were subsidizing Jim and Lynetta. The lack of furniture, household amenities, and traditional meals could be chalked up to pride. Jim and Lynetta probably didn’t want to take one more cent from his relations than they had to. But Lynetta dreamed of a finer life. She fancied herself a writer and thought she’d been one in previous lives. She wanted conversation devoted to grand things, reincarnation and progressive, nonconservative politics, not boring chatter about drapery and pie recipes. So she spurned invitations to visit other women in town and never invited them into her home. Even out in public, shopping or attending the Wednesday night community movie, Lynetta rarely spoke to anyone, and when she did kept conversation minimal. Many felt she was taking on airs she didn’t deserve—the woman couldn’t even keep a decent house. But Lynetta simply didn’t have anything to talk to them about and felt there was no basis for friendships. Lynetta couldn’t avoid spending time with the rest of her husband’s family. Without them, she and her husband and son would have been insolvent. But she was sensitive to every word they spoke to or about her, always anticipating insults. It was particularly galling that they constantly called her “Lynette” rather than “Lynetta.” When they’d first met her, she still called herself Lynette much of the time, and that was how they continued addressing her. They meant no offense, and certainly would have obliged if she’d asked them to call her Lynetta. But she didn’t, preferring to assume deliberate insult. Constantly frustrated, unable in any tangible way to fulfill her ambition of being a great lady, Lynetta got through her dreary days by nurturing resentments, and imagining confrontations where she triumphed over enemies through wit and courage. Lynetta later wrote colorful accounts of these fantasies, substituting self-aggrandizing fiction for fact. But during these early years in Lynn, her only audience was her small son. Jimmy’s two earliest and most enduring lessons from his mother were these: there was always some Them out to get you, and reality was whatever you believed.

There were some very clear signs of Jones' abilities - and inabilities - from the freaking get-go:

Jimmy briefly claimed that special powers were conferred on him by the Almighty. Challenged to prove it, he rigged a cape, probably a towel, climbed on top of the garage roof, and yelled for everybody to watch him fly. The other kids never believed Jimmy would actually jump, but he did. Instead of flying, he hit the ground hard and broke his arm. Afterward Jimmy was unabashed. He apparently still believed in his new powers even if nobody else did, but he didn’t mention them again. Around the same time came the animal funerals.

Also, he kept talking openly about sex in all kinds of very weird and incorrect situations. An example:

Some nights, Jim would summon Ronnie and launch into long, graphic conversations about sex. He was determined that the boy should know every possible detail. In a 2014 interview, Ronnie joked that, had Marceline been willing, Jim might very well have offered a practical demonstration. The ten-year-old dazzled his pals with his newfound knowledge. They agreed that Ronnie now knew more about sex than any other kid in their elementary school.

Early on, Jones really wanted a racially integrated society where diversity and socialism were key. He actually didn't care much about a God, any God, but socialism was the thing. He really wanted to help the poverty-stricken people, even if it meant he had to walk over corpses to get there.

Some of the Peoples Temple actions were really powerful:

Jones, at this stage in his life, was both visionary and pragmatic. Economic segregation was deep-seated in Indianapolis and would have to be challenged from the bottom up. Most corporate owners would be impervious to any requests. He couldn’t bring sufficient political or economic pressure to bear on them, and his talent for empathy wouldn’t work because they had nothing in common. But small businessmen, operators of mom-and-pop companies, were different. Jones understood their fierce pride in achieving ownership, and fear of losing what they’d worked so hard to attain. So he began his crusade with white-owned neighborhood cafés and restaurants. Most routinely turned away prospective black diners, though in passive-aggressive fashion rather than openly denying service based on race. Blacks who arrived and asked to be seated, even in places with many empty tables, were informed that advance reservations were required. If reservations were then requested, the blacks were told that every table at that time was already spoken for. Jones and Marceline went to medium-priced restaurants where they regularly dined as a couple or together with the white Haldemans, but this time they brought African American friends. When informed that reservations were required, they replied politely but firmly that this was never the case before. If no table was currently available, they’d wait to be seated. Occasionally, they finally were, though the service provided and food served was always deplorable. Most often, they were left standing until the restaurant closed. Either result suited Jones. The next day, he’d be back by himself, asking to speak to the owner. If the owner wasn’t on hand, Jones kept returning, as often as necessary until he was granted a meeting. Then, in a reasonable tone, Jones would ask that the restaurant begin accepting African American guests, and provide the same quality of food and service to them that was enjoyed by whites.

At first he was always refused and told to mind his own business. Jones would politely ask that the owner reconsider; he’d be back to talk again. During a second conversation, Jones worked to establish common ground. He’d grown up poor, he understood how hard it was to even start a business, let alone keep one going. Jones wasn’t pressing integration to cause trouble; he was suggesting something that would actually boost revenue by bringing in new customers. Everyone would benefit. Of course, continued refusal to integrate would result in a third visit, and this time Jones would bring a crowd of blacks and whites with him not to dine but to protest. He’d regret the necessity of it, and of course it would be picketing of a peaceful nature. Still, the restaurant’s white customers would have to maneuver through polite protesters asking them to withhold their business until this restaurant served diners of all races. It would be embarrassing; income would be lost. Jones’s sincerity was obvious. No one dared call his bluff. When the first few restaurant owners capitulated, Jones rewarded them by appearing with lots of new customers, most of them Temple members. He was shrewd, usually arriving at off-hours rather than busy ones, providing the restaurants with additional traffic without inconveniencing or driving away their regulars. Bills for these meals were paid out of the Temple general treasury, so cash-strapped members of the church enjoyed dining out for free.

It was Marceline who first proposed a “rainbow family.” Why not adopt multiple children of different races? She and Jim would love the children, of course, and try to be the best possible parents, but there would be the added benefit of the Jones family being a constant, unmistakable example of racial harmony. Her husband was enthusiastic. A black baby was the obvious choice, but never in Indiana history had a white couple adopted an African American infant. The Joneses would investigate that, but decided to begin with an Asian child. Since there were none available in their home state, the Joneses traveled to California, where they met and adopted two Korean orphans, a four-year-old girl they named Stephanie and a two-year-old boy renamed Lew. The children fit perfectly into their new home. Their adoptive parents adored them, and so did the congregation of Peoples Temple. Their new grandmother was less welcoming. Lynetta still didn’t care for kids. Almost at the same time Stephanie and Lew arrived, Marceline learned that she was pregnant. Marceline loved children, and the thought of giving birth to one of her own was thrilling. The pregnancy was uncomfortable from the start, but Marceline was a trained nurse and knew how to take care of herself. As she came closer to term, she cut back on outside activities and had lots of bed rest.

Temple women were glad to pitch in and help with Agnes, Stephanie, and Lew. The church continued involving its children in all sorts of wholesome activities, and in May 1959 there was a weekend outing to the zoo in Cincinnati. Jones led the group, which included his children but not their mother, who was in her final weeks of pregnancy and stayed home to rest. It was a rainy weekend. Thunderstorms lashed the region, but the Temple trip to Cincinnati went on as planned. They carpooled in a variety of vehicles. Everyone had a fine, if wet, time, and on the way home Stephanie Jones rode with one of the congregants. On the way, they were hit squarely by a drunk driver—Stephanie died instantly. Further pain was inflicted on the little girl’s grief-stricken parents when they prepared to bury her. Stephanie was Korean, and no Indianapolis cemetery would allow her body to be interred next to whites. Only a black mortician would prepare the dead girl for burial. The Joneses were directed to “Negro cemetery sections,” which were in the worst areas. It was still storming when Stephanie was laid to rest. The hole dug for her coffin was half full of water. Jones sobbed as Stephanie was lowered into the muck. He would recall later, “Oh, shit, it was cruel, cruel.”

All in all, this book deeply delves into how people followed Peoples Temple, and makes it easy to understand, while avoiding Jones' cause celebre in exploitative ways, even though his personality and those around him make up for that in spades, being extreme in a slew of ways.

Overall: very good, very non-blaming and still with a clear agenda that's palatable.

You probably know the expression... "don't drink the Kool-Aid." You may not know it was actually a cheap knock off called "flavor-aid" laced with cyanide that hundreds of people were forced to drink under threat of armed guards that fateful day in a South American jungle. Years ago I saw a short documentary on Jim Jones, but until reading this book I never knew the road to Jonestown was paved with good intentions. The Peoples Temple began with like minded people who wanted only to help the downtrodden, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Elderly people were housed in nursing homes by followers of Jim Jones where even if they could not afford to pay, were given care that met or exceeded state standards. Young people were given college educations that they never could have paid for on their own. They were made to feel that Jim Jones truly cared about them, and at first maybe he did. Then it all began to go horribly wrong. This detailed and factual account begins before Jim Jones was even born to a negligent mother who wouldn't allow him to be in the house when she wasn't home, and a sickly father who was too weak to stand up to her. It ends with the aftermath of murder and suicide that took 918 lives. If you ever wondered why or how so many people could allow themselves to be led astray this is the book for you. 5 stars from me.

I received an advance copy for review.