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The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land
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About This Book
On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities—fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the Latter-day Saints Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the U.S. Army. In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead—Colonia LeBaron—is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons' internal blood feud in the 1970s—started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the "Mormon Manson"—and up to the family's recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron. A descendant of polygamist Mormons herself, Denton explores what drove so many women over generations to join or remain in a community based on male supremacy and female servitude. Then and now, these women of Zion found themselves in an isolated desert, navigating the often-mysterious complications of plural marriage—and supported, Denton shows, only by one another. A mesmerizing feat of investigative journalism, The Colony doubles as an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities, against the odds.
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Reviews
"No stranger to uncovering intrigues and distantly related to the principals in this account, Denton tackles drug cartels, convoluted governments, and a dizzying array of family entanglements, beginning with an unflinching examination of LDS history from its inception by Joseph Smith through its migration westward to Utah and the defection of fundamentalist members to Chihuahua, Mexico, when the official church leadership rejected the practices of polygamy and blood atonement...This is exhaustively researched and riveting."
"and along the border...But this is more than a modern true-crime story, as Denton reaches back into the history of Mormonism and finds a deep well of violence, including the Cain-and-Abel rivalry and 'blood atonement' murders involving Joel and Ervil LeBaron from the 1970s to the 1990s and the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1847, when a Mormon militant group murdered a traveling party of 140 innocent immigrants and then tried to cover it up, 'the worst butchery of white people by other whites in the entire colonization of America'...Denton also dissects other elements of the Mormon practice, including legacies of male superiority, female servitude, and forced polygamy...Thorough research and balanced reporting combine in a riveting investigation."
"This intriguing portrait of fundamentalist Mormons in Mexico focuses on the 2019 massacre of three women and six children traveling by caravan on a desolate stretch of road between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua...But the focus is on the history of the LeBaron family, from its 19th-century split with the Mormon church in Salt Lake City and establishment of Colonia LeBaron in northern Mexico, to the brotherly feud that gripped the clan from the 1970s into the 1990s, resulting in dozens of 'blood atonement' murders meant to 'provide the victim with eternal salvation when his or her blood was spilled into the earth,' and the family's recent efforts to stop cartel-organized kidnappings in the region...Drawing on interviews with former 'sister wives,' Denton brings nuance and sensitivity to her discussion of the LeBarons' polygamist practices and the status of women in the community...The result is a fascinating tale of religion, violence, and family secrets."
"Denton's book is a testament to what happens when male power, under the guise of religious conviction, goes unchecked."
"Through a wealth of interviews with members and ex-members of Colonia LeBaron and its sister community, La Mora, Denton respectfully portrays the experiences of its women, seeking to understand why they 'remain within a novel American religion based on male supremacy and female servitude.' The Colony is a riveting work of reportage, exploring the violent interplay of religion, colonization and power."
"Riveting, insightful, ripped from the headlines, this should appeal to fans of true crime and of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven."
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