Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple
by Deborah Layton
List Price:
Our Price: $5.99
You Save: $9.96 (62%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.68 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Deborah LaytonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-11-09
ISBN: 0385489846
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple
Book Review: Painfully True, Heartbreaking and Still Horrifying!
Summary: 5 Stars
Deborah Layton is one of the lucky ones from Jonestown. No, she wasn't there when they all drank the poisoned cynaide but she describe the hellish existence that the people of Jonestown were forced to live through. They went to Guyana because they believed Jim's promises only to get there and treated like concentration camp prisoners. Deborah's mom had cancer and yet Jim and his welcoming group confiscated the medicine that would have eased her pain and agony before she died. The descriptions of the camp at Jonestown is believable and horrifying at the same time. Life there was under constant watch by each other. Nobody trusted one another and they all reported on each other to Jim. Next year in 2008, the Jonestown tragedy will have happened 30 years ago in the deep jungle where so many innocent men, women, and children were forced to die for Jim. The images of that day is still haunting to see all those bodies lying there in the unforgiving sun. Even Jim was too much of a coward to admit his faults and he had plenty, his biggest fault was that he was possessive of his members as if they were his personal property. While he was raking in the money which I am curious as to what happened to the millions of dollars that was left over after the mass suicide. Did the families of the victims ever get it back? Jim's followers were so blinded by his falseness that they signed over their own properties and finances to help his cause out. Deborah now tells us of the millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts while she and the other members were starving for food and living more like refugees. Jim's control was madness in the end in Jonestown. He feared the criticism and the negativity and the loss of only just a few people who wanted to go home to America. Many like Deborah wanted to flee but she was lucky because she had the chance and took it even though it meant that her mother died in Guyana and was buried in an unmarked grave in the jungle. Her brother Larry was charged and sent to prison. Despite Deborah's protest, he should be there. For those people who think that these followers were brainwashed and it can't happen to them, they are wrong. My college roommate joined a suspicious religious group and believe me, she would have jumped if they told her too. Yes, the brainwashing of these groups is quite powerful. Jim's power was false. He was never psychic but a coward and his people even his armed guards could have ended his power in an instant but the events on November 18, 1978 should never be forgotten or laughed at. Over 900 people were killed by one man's insanity. The White Nights described in the book help show how Jim created a world in which everybody was frightened of one another and the world outside. The White Nights were a horrifying look at the madness. Hundreds of people, men, women and children forced to gather in the Pavillion where they would later die in a ritual of practicing suicides. Nobody of course really listened to Deborah's pleas and concern for those in Jonestown until it was too late. Jim promised them a better world but only gave them a hellish existence in the jungle in a country that knew nothing of what was going on deep or in Jonestown. Why didn't they run? They were terrified. The descriptions of the well where children were tortured for misbehaving was horrifying enough. Children were held upside down by rope and poured in and out of the well where a frightening hand emerged to scare them from their behavior. Adults were forced to spend days and nights in the box which was a dark place and eat only gruel. Some adults were forced to be learned laborers for misbehaving and worked under harsh conditions which would be the kindest term. The book still haunts me but it gives me an enlightened understanding of the conditions that 900 people went through that day. Even Jim's closest ally, Sharon Harris, who had her children with her at Georgetown headquarters were the only people outside Jonestown to follow his orders. Sharon murdered her three children and herself that day. She was a zealot and thought she was doing the right thing at the time. I hope wherever the 900 + people are that they are in a safer place. They are with God and angels and Jim is paying for taking them away from us. Then there are the survivors who feel guilt, shame, and loss too. I feel for them as well. I remember watching Stephan Jones on a recent History documentary aired on the Golden Globes. I remember switching back and forth and suddenly Hollywood didn't seem that interesting as to the people who died. We must never forget Jonestown and that people even innocent, wonderful people can succumb to a man's insanity, madness, and cowardness as well. Debbie writes about how she too succumbed to Jim's power very well. It is a heartbreaking book as well as enlightening but Debbie survived and so did her brother who is now in prison. She can still visit him. Her former husband survived and only a handful did too. I don't think Debbie realizes how lucky she was compared to others whose entire families perished in Jonestown. Larry's imprisonment is far better than the prisonment that Jim forced on his followers because he was not physically possessive but mentally controlling as well. Prison is only a state of mind if you think about it. The Prison in Jonestown was far worse than anything imaginable in comparison to a prison in America.
I was only 5 years old when the tragic event happened and only in Kindergarten at the time. We must never forget the victims of Jonestown.
More Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Summary of Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple
Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" (Kirkus Review) story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity.From Waco to Heaven's Gate, the past decade has seen its share of cult tragedies. But none has been quite so dramatic or compelling as the Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which the Reverend Jim Jones and 913 of his disciples perished. Deborah Layton had been a member of the Peoples Temple for seven years when she departed for Jonestown, Guyana, the promised land nestled deep in the South American jungle. When she arrived, however, Layton saw that something was seriously wrong. Jones constantly spoke of a revolutionary mass suicide, and Layton knew only too well that he had enough control over the minds of the Jonestown residents to carry it out. But her pleas for help--and her sworn affidavit to the U.S. government--fell on skeptical ears. In this very personal account, Layton opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how anyone can fall under their spell. Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a riveting story of intrigue, power, and murder.
Deborah Layton was, by her own account, a typical rebellious youth, with nothing in her dossier to indicate that she would eventually find herself in Jim Jones's People's Temple in Guyana, looking for a way out of the green hell that had become the People's Temple Agricultural Project. She barely escaped in June 1978. Within months, more than 900 people drank Jones's cyanide punch and committed "revolutionary suicide" in the face of mounting stateside pressure on the cult, some of it prompted by Layton's own testimonials upon her safe return home. Her brother, Larry, also survived, and as one of the few left alive in Guyana became a scapegoat for Jones's crimes; he is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.
There is a simple naiveté at the root of Seductive Poison. Layton's own youthful innocence, foremost, but also the desire to trust another person, the need for belonging and meaning, which led so many perfectly normal Americans to place their faith in a suicidal madman. Far from confirming the simplistically monstrous Jones of the public imagination, Layton paints the man as a dark, twisted shaman, by turns soothing, then suddenly malevolent and petty, with a hugely sadistic streak that belied his perfectly coifed hair, expensive suits, and impressive political connections. The scenes in which she describes her escape and flight to safety are wrenching, her last-minute conversation with Jones and his seductive appeal for her to return home to Jonestown are chilling, and her fear and indecision are still palpable on the printed page. For Layton to recount tales this personal and horrifying must have been tremendously difficult. For her to lift those recollections above the bargain-basement freak-show reputation the People's Temple has achieved in the popular imagination and depict them with the power of great tragedy is nothing but extraordinary. --Tjames Madison
Religious Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Religious Books
The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Foxby Nancy Rubin Stuart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2005-02-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Foreskin's Lament: A Memoirby Shalom Auslander
Penguin Audio; Published: 2007-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jailby Mary Jordan, Kevin Sullivan
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2006-05-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Confessions (Penguin Classics)by Augustine
Penguin Classics; Published: 1961-11-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.57
Price in other shops:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Lives of the Saintsby Paul L Williams, Dr. Paul L. Williams
Alpha; Published: 2001-06-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.87
Price in other shops:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haleyby Malcolm X, Alex Haley, Attallah Shabazz
Ballantine Books; Published: 1992-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.34
Price in other shops:
In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Familyby Nansook Hong
Little, Brown; Published: 1998-09-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.14
Price in other shops:
Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhoodby Barbara Wilson
Picador; Published: 1997-01-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cultby Jayanti Tamm
Three Rivers Press; Published: 2010-12-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops:
Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)by Cecilia Ferrazzi
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1996-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.81
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Soldby Robert V. Levine
Wiley; Published: 2006-01-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.92
Price in other shops:
Six Years With God: Life Inside Rev. Jim Jones's Peoples Templeby Jeannie Mills
A. & W. Publishers; Published: 1979-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $39.99
The Suicide Cult: Inside Story of the People's Temple Sect and the Massacre in Guyanaby Marshall Kilduff, Ron Javers
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group; Published: 1978-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $99.95
Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cultby Miriam Williams
Harper Perennial; Published: 1999-06-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.69
Price in other shops:
Jonestown Survivor: An Insider's Lookby Laura Johnston Kohl
iUniverse; Published: 2010-03-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.33
Price in other shops:
How to Write Anything: A Guide and Reference with Readings with 2009 MLA and 2010 APA Updatesby John J. Ruszkiewicz, Jay T. Dolmage
Bedford/St. Martin's; Published: 2010-07-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $51.94
Jonestown - The Life & Death of Peoples TempleParamount; Release date: 2007-04-10; DVD
Best price: $10.49
Price in other shops:
Story of Jim Jones - Guyana TragedyBayside ENT Dist; Release date: 2008-02-26; DVD
Best price: $2.88
Price in other shops:
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestownby Julia Scheeres
Free Press; Published: 2011-10-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His Peopleby Tim Reiterman
Tarcher; Published: 2008-11-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.76
Price in other shops: