GOD IS A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

Quentin Bruet-Ferréol

(Bouquins, 405 pages, 2021)

Bruet-Ferréol’s debut novel draws on an in-depth investigation into the late 1990s mass killing of the Heaven’s Gate cult, co-led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles.

March 1997, California. Thirty-nine bodies are found in a luxurious ranch house dressed up in interstellar uniforms, wearing black-and-white Nike sneakers, with purple sheets over their faces. Was this sordid discovery a mass suicide or a mass killing? The police opted for the former. But how could the thirty-nine members of the cult die together while cleaning up the scene?

The novel brings us back to the mid-1970s. We witness the cult growing through the eyes of a young hippie named Bartholomew. Joining the group with his girlfriend, Harmony, he is required to give up his human features – his love and sex life, his identity, voice, emotions, tastes, and so on—if he is to attain the “Superior Level” that only the gurus, renamed Do and Ti, have access to. The cult ultimately aims to leave the “rotten” planet Earth aboard an alien spacecraft, heading to a better world in space. They see themselves as the trailblazers who will open the path for succeeding generations.

Bartholomew, climbing the ladder and fully dedicated to the cult, soon becomes an important member of the group, preaching the cult’s faith himself. Perversely controlled, members are told that they can leave whenever they want and are given the impression they have a choice in the matter. In truth, they are brainwashed. Bartholomew cuts his family off, agrees to the imposed androgyny, and concurs with the idea of “leaving his burdensome body behind.” But Bartholomew, renamed Jeff then Theody, has trouble with sticking to his vow of chastity and struggles with his humanity. Volunteering to be the first of the group to be castrated, his old panic-stricken self comes up again when he actually faces castration. As he starts doubting his new beliefs, he is expelled from the cult.

Through the gaze of an insider, Bruet-Ferreol sheds light on the system of ascendancy and manipulation that leads members of a cult to self-destruction and the loss of humanity in the name of so-called spiritual fulfillment. God Is a Thief in the Night is the fruit of a seven-year-long investigation. A cross between a murder mystery and a coming-of-age story, it blends facts and fiction in a dizzying dive into one of the strangest events of the twentieth century—and into the souls of the cult members, who are more like us than we might care to imagine.

Quentin Bruet-Ferréol writes about cults, nonconformist practices, and occult sciences. God Is a Thief in the Night is his debut novel.