Sally Denton on The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land: True Crime

Sally Denton is the author of eight books, including The Profiteers Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World; The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right; the bestseller The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs and Murder; and is the co-author of a classic account of Las Vegas, The Money and the Power. On November 4, 2019, masked gunmen ambushed a caravan of women and children on a desolate road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Nine people died; five were gravely injured. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities – fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late 19th century. In The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land (Liveright), Denton picks up where the initial reporting on the attacks ended and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. The patriarchs believed the Sinaloa cartel targeted them; others suspected the attack was part of a dispute over water rights with local farmers. For Denton, a descendant of polygamist Mormons herself, this is more than a crime story.

Gilbert King is the author of three books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. His most recent title is Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found (Riverhead Books). King has written about race, civil rights, and the death penalty for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and he is a contributor to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.