Beautiful Revolutionary

The thrilling new novel, inspired by the events at Jonestown in the 1970s.
It’s the summer of 1968, and Evelyn Lynden is a woman at war with herself. Minister’s daughter. Atheist. Independent woman. Frustrated wife. Bitch with a bleeding heart.
Following her conscientious-objector husband Lenny to the rural Eden of Evergreen Valley, California, Evelyn wants to be happy with their new life. Yet she finds herself disillusioned with Lenny’s passive ways — and anxious for a saviour. Enter the Reverend Jim Jones, the dynamic leader of a new revolutionary church …
Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Beautiful Revolutionary explores the allure of the real-life charismatic leader who would destroy so many. It follows Evelyn as she is pulled into Jones’s orbit — an orbit it would prove impossible for her to leave.

Reviews

‘Woollett achieves psychologically complex portraits of her two protagonists — minister’s daughter Evelyn and conscientious objector Lenny — as they are indoctrinated into a degrading system of punishment and reward that delivers dire consequences for their marriage and sense of selfhood. Wry and incisive, but also imbued with great empathy for the trauma Jones wrought, Beautiful Revolutionary compels the reader to consider the conditions and compromises that allow groupthink to overpower individual responsibility and agency.’