in the 1960s, people were still moving west, still pursuing the American Dream at its very edge. Even before it was a state, California was the destination for dreamers: pioneers and gold diggers, wannabe movie stars and fanatics, Midwesterners and émigrés intent on political, economic, and religious freedom. It was also a hotbed for cults.
What happens when the twisted dynamics of a family-like cult and a mother’s love for her daughters collide? Peggy Riley’s fi rst book asks just that question
Ke ping it in THE FAMILY
I WAS FIVE when Charles Manson was given the death penalty for the Tate/LaBianca murders committed by his followers, T e Family. I was too young to understand how a long-haired, crazy-eyed man could inspire such passion in his commune of young female hippies, but I wouldn’t forget his face. I was 13 when I saw the bodies of 914 worshippers strewn across the dirt of the jungle compound of Jonestown; they had drunk poison at the command of their leader, Jim Jones. In between there were catastrophes: earthquakes and oil spills, riots and serial killers, even as the Beach Boys still wished everyone could be a California girl, singing at rundown county fairs.
California with hippies cut off from their families and looking to be a part of something utopian. From the Midwest came Charles Manson and Jim Jones, both with their own troubled family backgrounds: Manson’s mother sold him for a pitcher of beer then put him into care; Jones’ mother believed she had given birth to a messiah. Both men were intent on becoming charismatic leaders, creating new families through communal living, political activism and lots of sex. In California, they found a state
full of fresh-faced and down-and-out followers, people with a great capacity to believe and a greater need to belong. In Manson and Jones they found a modern messiah able to be both father and God. We all want to belong to a person, a family, a group. I can understand the yearning, if not the commitment to the violent outcome when all that utopia goes wrong, as it always does – as it must.
Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley Tinder Press HB Out 28 March