... meticulously researched ... The author couldn’t have found a more bizarro clan to profile than the LeBarons, whose history of murdering family members, mental illness and incest rivals that of the Hapsburgs ... I grew progressively angrier as I read this book. While Denton provides an excellent history of a polygamist subculture, she never fully explains why women choose to stay in a religion that treats them so shabbily ... 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.
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.
Denton employs the 2019 murder of several young wives and mothers from the sister Mormon communities of La Mora and LeBaron as a point of departure to examine the tumultuous history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. 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.
