Sara Z. Carson is the author of the new novel Dark Messiah. She lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What inspired you to write Dark Messiah, and how did you create your character Nell?
A: I have been interested in the dynamics of cults since I was far too young; when I was a kid, I saw the Powers Boothe miniseries The Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones when it was rerun on TBS, and I was fascinated because I just couldn’t understand how such a thing could happen.
I initially approached cults through the true crime genre — I read books about Jonestown and I read Helter Skelter. And I find the men at the center of these organizations are very similar to each other and become a little boring over time. They all have really troubled dynamics with their mothers, they are all very interested in genocidal dictators, they’re often credited with being evil geniuses when they’re really just con men.
But what’s always interesting are the people who surround cult leaders, and how they are often concurrently victims and perpetrators.
I was working on another book that was an entirely different subject matter, and I was speaking with Brendan Cahill, who would become my publisher, about that project and he said, “I really want you to write a book about the Peoples Temple.”
I struggled to find a way in. When you look at the series of events that surround Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, there’s so many layers of tragedy — systemic failures, abuse, political opportunism — that it’s overwhelming.
I spent a lot of time kicking at it, and I went to the Peoples Temple Flickr page and looked at so many photos, and read so many individual profiles, and stumbled onto Judy Houston, a 14-year-old girl who, with her sister Patty, was sent to Jonestown.
Their father was probably murdered by the Peoples Temple when he tried to defect, and the series of events that followed resulted in Congressman Leo Ryan’s investigation.
So I had some narrative beats, and I was so interested in the duality of being a teenager and doing teenage things, while being part of an organization that dictates your every move and feeling. I also looked at Patty Hearst because I really wanted to understand what it means to survive an incident like this.
My mother has been downsizing her home and she gave me a bunch of my diaries from my teen years so there’s some of that in there too.
Q: Can you say more about how you researched the novel? What did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I went very deep into reading — memoirs from people who escaped cults, like Sarah Edmondson and India Oxenberg (who were both in NXIVM) — and books like Jeff Guinn’s The Road to Jonestown and A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres.
I found a few really focused books about young people in Jonestown, And Then They Were Gone by Judy Bebelaar and Ron Cabral, which was a really extraordinary look inside the day-to-day lives of young people who were part of Peoples Temple.
I also found a book called The Children of Jonestown by Kenneth Wooden, which has a sensationalist style but goes through a lot of the ways that Jim Jones manipulated social safety nets like the foster care system and Social Security, and how he leveraged his relationships with local politicians.
The website Jonestown & Peoples Temple: A Digital Archive is an extraordinary resource of letters, documents, remembrances, and so many photos from the founding of the Peoples Temple through its end, and I spent a lot of time on that site looking at photos because they show us a very different perspective of the experience of being a member — there’s so much hope and happiness on people’s faces.
You see how much joy they experienced as they built this community and became a real family.
I also spent a lot of time watching things like the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial and reading about Patty Hearst, two women who suffered immensely in the public eye for not being perfect victims.
I think what I was really taken with was the idea that there’s not a type of person who ends up in a cult as much as there are circumstances that drive someone to be seduced into one: being in a state of uncertainty or having recently suffered a loss makes a person a target.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: We iterated a lot on the title and this one ultimately resonated with me because it was simple. The man at the center of this organization isn’t what he claims to be, and in fact he is there to deceive and do harm and to bring people into the worst parts of themselves.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: We’re extraordinarily judgmental about other people’s experiences and responses here in the year of our lord 2026 in America, and we have a very narrow view of what circumstances qualify a person to be considered a victim.
We’re hard on survivors who don’t follow a linear path to recovery. I would love for people to be more curious and compassionate about how trauma manifests itself.
I would also love for readers to consider how we center these terribly unremarkable men who all seem to have the same handbook and techniques, and ask questions about them, and are sometimes dismissive of the remarkable and unique people who they victimize and harm.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on my follow-up, which will take place in the club scene in New York City in the 1980s. I would describe it as a combination of Rosemary’s Baby and Oliver Twist, with a garnish of Disco Bloodbath.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Visit my website sarazcarsonauthor.com where you can find my newsletter and social media handles!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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