{"id":67288,"date":"2016-09-21T14:27:56","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=67288"},"modified":"2026-02-27T14:21:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:21:53","slug":"the-journey-to-horrifyingly-wrong","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=67288","title":{"rendered":"The Journey to Horrifyingly Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

For over a year now I\u2019ve been working on a novel about Jonestown, which I wrote about in last year\u2019s issue of the jonestown report<\/em>. One year later, I\u2019m pleased to share that I have two hundred pages written and a lot more to say.<\/p>\n

A Search for Grace in Jonestown<\/a> spoke of my struggle to find an entry point for the story, and ultimately it was Carolyn Layton who caught my attention, a woman whom Mike Cartmell<\/a> describes as \u201cas complicit in the murders of November 18 as Jim Jones himself.\u201d Laura Kohl\u2019s essay, Carolyn Layton: Jonestown\u2019s American Gothic<\/a>, poses a haunting question of Jim Jones\u2019 staff: \u201cI have to wonder if at the end, they even knew that anything \u2013 everything \u2013 had gone so horrifyingly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

My novel follows a woman based loosely on Carolyn Layton, and Laura\u2019s question is one of many that guides me. How does a person get to that point? What is that journey like?<\/p>\n

A few months ago, I fell into conversation with a fellow writer, and told him about my plans for this book. I described Carolyn Layton as a \u201cmoral question mark,\u201d to which he arched his eyebrows and replied, \u201cIf she helped plan a massacre, I think the question is answered.\u201d Yet I find that simplistic; it doesn\u2019t make for a very compelling novel. It may be true that \u201cactions speak louder than words,\u201d but I\u2019m much more interested in what motivates people to act, and in Carolyn Layton\u2019s case the answer is complex. In Stephan Jones\u2019 essay, “Like Father, Like Son.” he posits, \u201cIt seemed to me that Carolyn knew Dad was full of shit, but was willing to put up with his games in exchange for the power and purpose she believed he gave her.\u201d In “My Brother\u2019s Mother,” his own reflection on Carolyn, Stephan offers another observation that complicates the first: \u201cI saw Carolyn, just like Mom but in her own way, try to manage Dad while she fixed him.\u201d<\/p>\n

My protagonist, like Carolyn, is directly complicit in the massacre that concludes the story, and I\u2019ve decided to give her the benefit of the doubt: beyond anything else, she is motivated by love and a desire to be loved. I hope this complicates the reader\u2019s understanding of her moral character. I have no idea how close or far I\u2019ve landed from the real Carolyn Layton in my fictionalization of her, but it\u2019s not a concern of mine, because my novel as a whole is a loose reimagining of the story of Jonestown, an attempt to animate the questions that the real story raised for me. What does it mean to be a bad person? To what extent can a capacity for love be redeeming? Are we defined by our actions or our intentions?<\/p>\n

There is no way to find an answer to Laura Kohl\u2019s question, but simply exploring it has been an emotionally intense experience for me, one from which I\u2019ve learned a lot. I\u2019m extremely glad I\u2019ve pursued this project, despite the difficulties inherent in working with such sensitive subject matter. As with last year, I would like to thank all who have contributed to this site\u2014I have found every piece I\u2019ve read to be illuminating and powerful, and I\u2019m grateful for the opportunity to read your reflections and stories.<\/p>\n

To conclude, I\u2019d like to share one of my stories with the readers of this report. The Salesman<\/a>, which is reprinted from its original in the Columbia Journal<\/a>, relates back to Jonestown in that it\u2019s about a door-to-door monkey salesman. My work has also appeared in The Adroit Journal<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Narrative Magazine<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>and The Monarch Review<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Sara Brody is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. A native San Franciscan, she heard the story of Jonestown at a young age; her fascination with the tragedy and the Peoples Temple community sparked the writing of her novel. She invites anyone interested in her project to contact her at <\/em>sbbrody92@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For over a year now I\u2019ve been working on a novel about Jonestown, which I wrote about in last year\u2019s issue of the jonestown report. One year later, I\u2019m pleased to share that I have two hundred pages written and a lot more to say. A Search for Grace in Jonestown spoke of my struggle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":67515,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-67288","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67288","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67288"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134217,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67288\/revisions\/134217"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}