The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land

Denton (The Profiteers) examines the tangled web of family, faith, and commerce leading to tragedy on a lonely road in Northern Mexico. Denton, a descendant of early converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (denoted in the audio as Mormons), uses the 2019 massacre of nine people from the towns of La Mora and LeBaron as a starting point for a sprawling exploration of offshoot Mormon history from the 1830s to the present. Impatient true crime purists may balk at the number of seemingly random threads pulled, but they lead in many intriguing directions, from the early settlement of Utah to the modern cartel wars. Stops along the way include the flight to Mexico of fundamentalist families determined to retain polygamy, bloody generational interfamily feuds, and the NXIVM cult. Ann Richardson’s gentle voice might seem a strange match for the material, but the experienced narrator knows just when to push her intensity higher. She also has a knack for interpreting the various accents of many times and places without mockery, and for keeping the massive cast of people approachable despite often sharing a small handful of names.