{"id":29450,"date":"2013-07-25T17:05:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T17:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=29450"},"modified":"2013-11-15T01:24:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T01:24:55","slug":"scheeres","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=29450","title":{"rendered":"An Author Reflects Upon Her Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"07-18-scheeres\"<\/a>Now that my book, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown<\/em>, is finished, I\u2019d like to express my gratitude to the people who helped me with my research. Many Jonestown survivors spoke with me, spending hours, in some cases, flaking off old scabs as they remembered painful events and loved ones lost. Not every story made it into my book, but they all informed it and I\u2019m grateful for their contribution.<\/p>\n

Likewise, I\u2019m thankful for this website and all the resources which are available on it for everyone. The efforts of its managers \u2013 especially in securing the release of 50,000 pages from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act \u2013 were crucial to my ability to complete this work. Their contribution to honoring the memory of the Jonestown settlers is beyond compare.<\/p>\n

As I undertook this project, my goal was to question assumptions about the Jonestown massacre, and create a deeper empathy for Jones\u2019 victims. I believe I\u2019ve attained that goal. One early reader wrote that she\u2019d never again use the term \u201cdrinking the Kool-Aid\u201d again, which she now found offensive.<\/p>\n

Wading through the FBI files was exhausting. It took me a year to read and organize them. Figuring out the narrative arc was also a challenge, but I became deeply attached to the group of people I followed through Jonestown. By reconstructing their daily travails and deceptions, I felt was somehow able to keep them company \u2013 at thirty years\u2019 remove \u2013 during their darkest hours, to acknowledge their terror and powerlessness. Now that the book is done, I miss them. I think about Edith Roller, for example, whenever I shop at World Market, a store she also loved to frequent.<\/p>\n

I had a lot of dreams \u2013 nightmares \u2013 about Jonestown. About trying to outwit Jim Jones into letting me leave. About standing in line with my children on that final night, desperately looking for escape route. About feeling trapped.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I want my book to honor the memory of the Jonestown dead. They were not \u201cpsychotic Kool-Aid drinkers\u201d as respected cultural critic Susan Jacoby recently called them, but normal people \u2013 idealists, I\u2019d argue \u2013 who were horribly betrayed by the man who claimed to love them most.<\/p>\n

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Now that my book, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown, is finished, I\u2019d like to express my gratitude to the people who helped me with my research. Many Jonestown survivors spoke with me, spending hours, in some cases, flaking off old scabs as they remembered painful events and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":29451,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29450","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29450"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48646,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29450\/revisions\/48646"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}