To be honest, I didn't want to get inside Jones's head. Every time I wrote about Jim Jones I practically had to tie myself to my chair to force myself to do it; I hated him so much. He wanted to go down in history and he did. He's had hundreds of books and articles written about him. I was much more interested in the stories of the rank-and-file members of Peoples Temple, what drew them to Jones, and what they did once they were trapped in Jonestown and realized Jones was intent on killing them.

What better way to control your kid than by sending her to a compound on an island in the middle of the Caribbean, confiscating her money and passport, where she will be forced to comply with the program if she wants to leave?

I think the folks who joined Jim Jones's church did so because they truly believed in his stated ideals of racial equality and social justice. That's why he was able to convince one thousand of them to immigrate to the jungle of Guyana. Although history has stigmatized Jonestown residents as the people who "drank the Kool-aid," I'd argue that they were noble idealists. Furthermore, they were murdered. They didn't willingly drink poison - they were forced to do so at gunpoint. They sought the ideal, only to have their leader horribly betray them.

That's why I think it's important to revisit the story of Jonestown. I hope readers come away with a greater compassion for Jim Jones's victims, a third of whom were minors. To get a feeling for what it was like to be in their situation.

I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time, writing about mass death while I'm growing this precious little life inside me. Here I am, worried about everything I eat and drink and whether I walk past a smoker, and meanwhile I'm writing about an event where almost three hundred children were slaughtered. Most were never identified and are buried in a mass grave in Oakland. It was surreal. But it felt good to give Jim Jones's victims a voice, especially ordinary church members.

Before I went to Escuela Caribe, my parents showed me the school's brochures featuring smiling kids at the beach or on horseback. The propaganda was greatly appealing to a kid from rural Indiana who hated her high school anyway. I also got reassurances that I could return if I didn't like it. But shortly after the gates closed behind me, I learned I'd been deceived; the beach was far away and I couldn't return home until I'd completed the program.

In California, Jim Jones even staged a shooting of himself. The lesson of this was two-fold. One, that he was a god - he could heal himself. He had these magic powers. A large segment of his congregation came from a Pentecostal tradition that believed in faith healing and already believed Jones had the power to cure others. And two, the "shooting" made him seem important. Civil rights leaders were being gunned down - MLK, Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X - and he longed to be considered as heroic and important as they were.