What the staff at Poor Richard’s Books suggests for your next great read

As part of The Colorado Sun’s literature section — SunLit — we’re featuring staff picks from book stores across the state. >> Click here for more SunLit — COLORADO SUN

Poor Richard’s Books & Gifts, 320 N. Tejon St., Colorado Springs — poorrichardsdowntown.com

From Jeffery Payne, Book Department Coordinator: Sally Denton does a remarkable job sorting through vast, overwhelming and endless events to present a true-life telling and, the unsettling back story, of the horrific deaths of nine members of a Mormon sect in Mexico. With vivid attention to details, the reader learns of the complicated and long history of the LeBaron clan. We witness how the tenuous uneasy relationship between the residents of Colonia LeBaron, the surrounding Mexican drug cartels and the local population unravels which results in mistrust and more death. The pure ungodly violence that the members of the community put upon one another in the name of grace is astounding. This is a crime family hidden behind the cloak of “godliness.”

This book gives us insight into the harsh realities of fundamental Mormons and their treatment of women. We get just a glimpse of the complexities and workings of plural marriages and for this reason we admire the strength and courage of these people. It’s a complicated story, there are heroes and villains, sometimes they are the same person.

Sally Denton Joins Coast to Coast AM

Polygamous Mormon Sect — Coast to Coast AM

Investigative journalist Sally Denton joined George Knapp in the first half of the show to discuss her book, The Colony, which tells the complex story of the LeBaron clan spanning the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons’ internal blood feud in the 1970s, and an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities.

In 2019, a caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. 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 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late 19th century.

Sally Denton Discusses: THE COLONY: Faith and Blood in a Promised Lan

Radio Free Galisteo

Santa Fe -based Investigative journalist Sally Denton dives into the still-ongoing case of the murder of nine people – all members of the LeBarón and La Mora communities—fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Northern Mexico in the 19th century. In a masterful work of history and a chilling, compulsive true crime narrative, she tells the story of a massacre which unfurls into the strange, violent history of the LeBaron clan in a land, and under circumstances much stranger than fiction.

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