The Colony

Faith and Blood in a Promised Land

By: Sally Denton

Narrated by: Ann Richardson

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.

©2022 Sally Denton (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Great story, tolerable narrator

Having read Jon Krakauer's *Under the Banner of Heaven,* I was highly motivated to listen to this well reviewed book. Terrific content! However, the narrator's slow, light voice lacked all authority, even when sped up to 1.10 rate. Her voice is much better suited to children's literature.

Fascinating story...terrible narration

This well-researched story of why several Mormon women and children were murdered on a road in Mexico is engrossing, going back to the founding of the LDS church and its historical splinterings and internal debates over polygamy and other doctrinal issues. The intersections of this history with Mexican politics, American society, and international drug cartels are grim. The quality of Sally Denton's writing and research kept me listening to the end. HOWEVER...this narrator did not seem to care about this story at all. Her flat narration, bored tone, and frequent mispronunciation of Spanish words made me grit my teeth all the way through the book.

Very dull

Great factual information, but it reads very slowly, and it is very dull. I really can’t recommend this book.

Great story, terrible narrator

The headline says it all. Narrator vacillates between computer voice and stumbling through sentences. This book deserves better. Proceed at your own risk.

Crisp woven and bizarre facts

At first I thought the narration was too passive, but I was wrong. This book is so well written and researched that a more forceful performance would be a distraction.
Fascinating.