The Girl from Jonestown

No cover — Sharon Maas: The Girl from Jonestown (Paperback, 2022, Bookouture)

Paperback, 414 pages

English language

Published Oct. 27, 2022 by Bookouture.

ISBN:: 978-1-80314-239-5

(1 review)

The woman looked at me, anguish brimming in her eyes. I picked up the note she’d left and read the scrawl: HELP!!! Then: Mom. Followed by a number.

A gripping and heartbreaking read, based on the true story of the Jonestown cult, one of the darkest chapters in American history.

When journalist Zoe Quint loses her husband and child in a tragic accident, she returns home to Guyana to heal. But when she hears cries and music floating through the trees, her curiosity compels her to learn more about the Americans who have set up camp in a run-down village nearby. Their leader, Jim Jones, dark eyed and charismatic, claims to be a peaceful man who has promised his followers paradise.

But everything changes when Zoe meets one of his followers, a young woman called Lucy, in a ramshackle grocery store. Lucy grabs Zoe’s arm, raw terror in her eyes, …

The woman looked at me, anguish brimming in her eyes. I picked up the note she’d left and read the scrawl: HELP!!! Then: Mom. Followed by a number.

A gripping and heartbreaking read, based on the true story of the Jonestown cult, one of the darkest chapters in American history.

When journalist Zoe Quint loses her husband and child in a tragic accident, she returns home to Guyana to heal. But when she hears cries and music floating through the trees, her curiosity compels her to learn more about the Americans who have set up camp in a run-down village nearby. Their leader, Jim Jones, dark eyed and charismatic, claims to be a peaceful man who has promised his followers paradise.

But everything changes when Zoe meets one of his followers, a young woman called Lucy, in a ramshackle grocery store. Lucy grabs Zoe’s arm, raw terror in her eyes, and passes her a note with a phone number, begging her to call her mother in America.

Zoe is determined to help Lucy, but locals warn her to stay away from the camp, and as sirens and gunshots echo through the jungle at nightfall, she knows they are right. But she can’t shake the frightened woman’s face from her mind, and when she discovers that there are young children kept in the camp, she has to act fast.

Zoe’s only route to the lost people is to get close to their leader, Jim Jones. But if she is accepted, will she be able to persuade the frightened followers to risk their lives and embark on a perilous escape under the cover of darkness? And when Jim Jones hears of her plans, could she pay the highest price of all?

1 edition

Stephanie Jane reviewed The Girl from Jonestown by Sharon Maas

A thrilling page-turner

5 stars

I've read a few accounts over the years about the Jonestown tragedy, but they have always focused on the People's Temple cult or Jim Jones himself. In The Girl From Jonestown, Sharon Maas sets the tale within a larger Guyanese community. She vividly brings to life the realities of the island's jungle surrounding the Jonestown camp and I loved her idea of exploring what it must have been like to have been neighbours to such a strange undertaking. Maas's Guyanese characters are kept awake at nights by continuous ranting tapes played through loudspeakers, hear gunfire and terrified screams and, peeping from the anonymity of the forest, they witness the Jonestown inhabitants becoming steadily more malnourished and fearful. The contrast between the two communities makes for a deeply authentic novel so, even while Maas's central characters are fictional, their experiences and interactions with the 'real people' feel genuine.

Zoe's determination to …

I've read a few accounts over the years about the Jonestown tragedy, but they have always focused on the People's Temple cult or Jim Jones himself. In The Girl From Jonestown, Sharon Maas sets the tale within a larger Guyanese community. She vividly brings to life the realities of the island's jungle surrounding the Jonestown camp and I loved her idea of exploring what it must have been like to have been neighbours to such a strange undertaking. Maas's Guyanese characters are kept awake at nights by continuous ranting tapes played through loudspeakers, hear gunfire and terrified screams and, peeping from the anonymity of the forest, they witness the Jonestown inhabitants becoming steadily more malnourished and fearful. The contrast between the two communities makes for a deeply authentic novel so, even while Maas's central characters are fictional, their experiences and interactions with the 'real people' feel genuine.

Zoe's determination to discover exactly what is hidden within Jonestown provides the narrative thread that drives this novel. I appreciated learning so much more about her life outside of Jonestown though. The book is very much her story and a compelling tale it is too. Maas gives Zoe complex situations to navigate and, while I didn't always agree that she (Zoe) made the best choices, I could always understand why she chose that particular path.

I did wonder, early on, about the ethics of setting a thriller within such a tragic event, but by the end of the novel I felt Maas had done justice to the People's Temple victims as well as to Zoe's story. She obviously did tremendous amounts of research into the whole life of the People's Temple cult and this, coupled with her extensive local's Guyanese knowledge, makes The Girl From Jonestown a wonderfully immersive and exciting read. The Girl From Jonestown brilliantly evokes this particular time and place, and it is a thrilling page turner too.