First-Person Accounts

In addition to the books and articles listed here, many of the authors noted have items that appear on the Jonestown website. These authors are indicated by links to their articles.

Barbour, KathrynWho Died. Niles, OH: Katbard Publishing, 2015. Review by Craig Foreman.

Brailey, Jeffrey. The Ghosts of November: Memoirs of an Outsider Who Witnessed the Carnage at Jonestown, Guyana. San Antonio, TX: J & J Publishers, 1998. (The entirety of the book also appears here. Mr. Brailey maintained a blog  – also named The Ghosts of November – between 2007 and 2008.)

Feinsod, Ethan. Awake in a Nightmare: Jonestown the Only Eyewitness Account. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. (Information provided by Odell Rhodes.)

Jones, H.J. Jonestown: An American Family Tragedy. Traverse City, MI: Mission Point Press, 2023. See reviews by Judy Bebelaar and Katherine Hill. NEW

Kahalas, Laurie Efrein. Snake Dance: Unravelling the Mysteries of Jonestown. New York: Red Robin Press, 1998.

Kerns, Phil and Doug Wead. Peoples Temple, Peoples Tomb. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1979.

Klineman, George and Sherman Butler, and David Conn. The Cult that Died: The Tragedy of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980.

Kohl, Laura Johnston. Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look. New York: iUniverse, 2010. (Author’s description of book appears here. The iUniverse description of the book appears here. A review on Amazon.com appears here.)

Krause, Charles A., with Laurence M. Stern, Richard Harwood and the staff of the Washington Post. Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account. New York: Berkley Publishing, 1978.

Lane, Mark. Citizen Lane. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Review by Matthew Thomas Farrell.

_____. The Strongest Poison. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1980; The Lane Group, LLC (2014). Review by Matthew Thomas Farrell.

Layton, Deborah. Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple. New York: Anchor Books, 1998.

Mills, Jeannie. Six Years with God: Life Inside Reverend Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple. New York: A&W Publishers, 1979.

Moore, Rebecca. In Defense of Peoples Temple. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988.

_____. The Jonestown Letters: Correspondence of the Moore Family 1970–1985. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986.

Smith, Eugene. Back to the World: A Life after Jonestown. Fort Worth, TX: TCU Press, 2021. [Editor’s note: See reviews by darlene anita scott and Rev. Richard Lawrence.]

Stoen, Timothy Oliver. Marked For Death: My War With Jim Jones the Devil of Jonestown. North Charleston, SC: CreativeSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. [Editor’s note: This book was reissued as Love Them to Death in March 2017. See reviews by John R. Hall and Matthew Thomas Farrell.]

Thielmann, Bonnie, with Dean Merrill. The Broken God. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1979.

Thrash, Catherine (Hyacinth), as told to Marian K. Towne. The Onliest One Alive: Surviving Jonestown, Guyana. Indianapolis: Marian K. Towne, 1995.

Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. Slavery of Faith The Untold Story of the Peoples Temple from the Eyes of a Thirteen Year old, her Escape from Jonestown at 21 and Life 30 Years Later. New York: iUniverse, 2009. (Author’s description of book appears here. A review appears here. Other reviews at Amazon.com appear here.)

Wooden, Kenneth. The Children of Jonestown. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. (Cites Stanley Clayton extensively.)

Wright, Lawrence. “The Sons of Jim Jones.” The New Yorker69, no. 39 (22 Nov 1993): 66–89.

Yee, Min S. and Thomas N. Layton. In My Father’s House: The Story of the Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.