Entertainment Weekly calls this a memoir that "will break your heart and mend it again, but it won't stop haunting you." The New York Times Book Review calls it a "page-turner." From the publisher: "Julia and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen years old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and all-encompassing racism. At home lives a distant mother—more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children—and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir, Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe—a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic—is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. As Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals, their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and 'unadorned, dark humor' (Los Angeles Times)."

Traci Thomas of The Stacks Podcast</a> recommended this book on Episode 162 and Episode 212 of What Should I Read Next. Traci knows her nonfiction and says that this book is an excellent account of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. A charismatic preacher, Jones drew people into his congregation with sermons on social justice. When his sermons grew darker, and his behavior more unpredictable, it got harder and harder for people to leave his community. When the U.S. government got involved, it was far too late. Julia Scheeres' haunting account focuses on the people who lived in Jonestown, based on declassified FBI documents, interviews, and rare video footage.