Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown
by Candace Fleming
Middle School, High School    Schwartz/Random    368 pp.
4/25    9780593480069    $19.99
Library ed.  9780593480076    $22.99
e-book ed.  9780593480083    $11.99

On Saturday, November 18, 1978, more than nine hundred members of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple died at Jonestown in Guyana. Though the event was originally described as a mass suicide, it eventually became known that many, including infants, children, and the elderly, were murdered. Early chapters present a biographical treatment of Jones, covering his boyhood, marriage, and early Christian ministry in Indiana. Uncharacteristically for the time, his congregations were racially integrated, and they appealed to many as the civil rights era dawned. Eventually, in 1965, he moved Peoples Temple to California, shed Christianity in favor of socialism, and began steadily to exert control over every facet of his group, including members’ property, income, and relationships. Jones often used gross manipulation and deception to do so, and increasing scrutiny drove him to Guyana. When Congressman Leo Ryan came for an investigative visit, it set the tragic events in motion. It’s a testament to Fleming’s storytelling prowess that the book becomes more and more compelling despite our knowledge of the outcome. If some of her recent titles have contained elements of true crime, this one (along with Murder Among Friends, rev. 3/22) also dabbles in another genre: horror. Black-and-white captioned photographs are gathered in the middle and at the end of the book. An annotated list of key people prefaces the volume, while an author’s note, sources, a bibliography, and an index are appended.

From the May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.