On November 18, 1978, when the Jonestown massacre occurred in Guyana, I was in 8th grade. I was aware it happened and probably even read about it in my parents’ Newsweek magazine, but details remained hazy. I recently rectified that by checking out Candace Fleming’s Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown, which did a good job filling in the gaps.
Published earlier this year, Death in the Jungle is written for a young adult (YA) audience. That doesn’t mean it’s not substantive though. The hardback edition is over 350 pages long, and the narrative is chronologically comprehensive: Fleming begins in 1931, with Jim Jones’ birth, and ends in 1979, with the burial of over 400 caskets in a single mass grave in California. (In total, 918 people died in Guyana, including over 300 children.) Although in-text citations are minimal, making for a faster, more immersive reading experience, Fleming’s book is clearly well researched. There is a lengthy Sources section at the end, pointing back to each page containing referenced material, followed by an extensive bibliography.
Fleming’s writing is engaging, emphasizing the personal stories of people who got caught up in Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. By humanizing followers in this manner, she makes it harder for readers to dismiss members as a monolithic, unrelatable group of individuals with whom they have nothing in common. As their stories demonstrate, there were many reasons people joined the Temple and wound up in Jonestown–religious, political, and familial. Not all were true believers, but because of their unique circumstances they remained involved until it was too late.
In terms of subject matter, Fleming doesn’t hold back. She details Jones’ drug abuse, his sexual infidelities, and the multiple acts of deception he perpetrates against his followers. She also describes how followers demonstrate loyalty to Jones by either facilitating the deceptions, suspending disbelief, or, if the fakery is obvious to them, concluding that the ends justify the means. This ultimately culminates in Jones commanding Peoples Temple members in Jonestown to commit mass suicide (in many cases coerced) and murder:
As the nurses filled syringes from the vat, the guards trained their weapons on the residents. No one would be allowed to choose between living and dying. The only decision left to them was death by poison or by gunshot.
While not written to be gratuitous or exploitative, some parents might not want their younger teens exposed to this book’s disturbing subject matter. Older teens should be better equipped to wrestle with the implications of events depicted, which include the dangers of ceding control to a charismatic, narcissistic leader. This will be especially true if they engage with the book’s thoughtful Prologue, with its discussion of cults and list of characteristics that distinguish destructive groups (the phrase Fleming prefers to use in lieu of the word “cult”) from those that are constructive or neutral.
Fleming, Candace. Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown. Anne Schwartz Books, 2025.
