The Colony, Sally Denton
The Colony, Sally Denton
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Colony
Faith and Blood in a Promised Land

Author: Sally Denton

Narrator: Ann Richardson

Unabridged: 9 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/28/2022


Synopsis

On the morning of November 4, 2019, a 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 LDS 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 US Army.

In The Colony, Sally Denton 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 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.

About Sally Denton

Sally Denton is the author of nine books, including the bestseller The Bluegrass Conspiracy, and coauthor of a classic account of Las Vegas, The Money and the Power. She divides her time between Nevada and New Mexico.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on July 26, 2022

There is a quiet beauty to The Colony. Audrey Magee's latest novel is set in 1979 on an unnamed island off Ireland's Atlantic coast where traditional life and language are receding to extinction. With the Troubles at a boiling point on the mainland, the islanders host two summer visitors - one a pai......more

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on September 08, 2022

2nd in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here:: [URL not allowed]-TMI... A really fascinating and distinctive fictional examination of the effects of colonization – ranging from artistic ap......more

Goodreads review by Meike on July 26, 2022

Now Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 A novel set on a remote Irish island in 1979, and it couldn't be more timely: An English painter and a French linguist visit the island, both following their own agendas while also claiming that they are helping the poor, isolated community. Magee talks about......more

Goodreads review by Doug on December 22, 2022

4.5, rounded down. Had to mull my rating and what I felt about this book overnight - it IS thought-provoking and very well written - and yet I wasn't ENTIRELY satisfied; although of the six 2022 Booker nominees I have read thus far, it is clearly the standout (which actually says more about the deart......more

Goodreads review by Eric on March 23, 2022

On a small, sparsely-populated and remote Irish island there is an ageing population that still speaks their native Irish language, but they are steadily dying out. One of the remaining youngest island residents is James who prefers to speak English and be addressed by his English name rather than h......more