Marceline Baldwin is a shy and mild-mannered pastor’s daughter. Then she meets the charismatic Jim Jones. She falls madly in love.

They have a mutual desire to change the world and quickly become inseparable. In the midst of 1950s segregated America, Jim and Marceline Baldwin Jones made headlines for being the first white family in Indiana to adopt a black child. They adopt five other non- white children and called themselves ‘the rainbow family’.

Jones’ following begins to grow and becomes The People’s Temple, welcoming people from all walks of life and giving hope to the disenfranchised. They build a commune in the jungle of British Guyana on the ideals of equality and brotherly love, but the reality is very different. Jim Jones is a dangerous egotist and when things start to fall apart, he plans his mass-murder suicide mission. If he’s going to die, he will take his followers with him…

On November 18th 1978, nine hundred and nine people died in the jungle in British Guyana.

Published on the 45th anniversary, Paradise Undone explores the tragedy through the voices of four protagonists – Marceline Baldwin Jones and three other members of the Peoples’ Temple. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Annie Dawid blends fact and fiction, using real and composite characters to tell a story about the greatest single loss of US civilian lives in the 20th century.

My Review

There were times this book made me cry, at others it made me cross. Often at night I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The babies and children who were murdered (yes murdered because they didn’t have any choice), but also about Christine, held down by four men and injected with the poison. That was the worst kind of murder if there is such a thing. It was very hard to read. The sedatives were supposed to help alleviate the suffering, but they took 15 minutes to work, by which time it was far too late – the victims were already dead, having suffered excruciating pain and convulsions.

By the end I hoped I would understand why they would follow a drug-crazed lunatic (which is what pastor Jim Jones became by the end). I would try to understand the power of brainwashing. For some of the very poor, any life was better than what they knew. Many had been drug addicts, and the African Americans had been racially abused all their lives. But what about the white middle classes? How were they taken in by him?

Initially the The People’s Temple was all about uniting everyone together in true socialism, where everyone was equal regardless of colour, nationality or creed. Children were adopted into ‘rainbow families’. Charismatic leader Jim and his quiet wife Marceline became the Mother and Father of the temple. But some of his quotes are unbelievable – he saw himself as the only means to salvation. He talks as if he is God.

I AM PEACE
I AM JUSTICE
I AM EQUALITY
I AM FREEDOM
I AM GOD

Once they had moved to Guyana and set up Jonestown, Jim had become paranoid about the authorities coming after them, with snipers to take them out. He told everyone that the children would be taken and killed. Now I am not sure whether he actually believed any of it, but it was certainly a way to stop people defecting. Those who did were the traitors, the ones who would eventually lead to the ultimate White Night “the term…used to denote a crisis within Peoples Temple and the possibility of mass death during or as a result of the crisis*”. It had been well rehearsed.

On that fateful night, everyone was to take a drink of Fla-Vor-Aid which contained cyanide and sedatives. If they were too young to swallow it, or were reluctant, they were injected instead, often by force. Jim Jones himself was shot in the head, whether self-inflicted or by someone else, we’ll never know.

Strangely, I don’t remember the Jonestown massacre in 1978 (even though I was in my twenties at the time). Maybe it wasn’t widely reported in the UK. But some years later, when TV loved to promote the most dramatic events, Waco made the national news here, and similarities were drawn with Jonestown. Another 15 years on and I studied cults as part of my OU degree, and we looked at Jonestown, Waco and others, though not in great detail. I am still interested in the idea of brainwashing.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author Annie Dawid, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.

*https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=35371

About the Author

Annie Dawid has published five books, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. She teaches at the University of Denver, University College master’s program in creative writing online from her home in very rural Colorado. Her fifth book, Put Off My Sackcloth, was published last year by The Humble Essayist Press. It was a runner up in the Los Angeles Book Festival 2021 autobiography category and a finalist in the 2022 Memoir category from Book Excellence and in non-fiction, Rubery International Book Award 2022. Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown won the 2022 Screencraft Cinematic Book Contest.