An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder
About this audiobook
This true crime odyssey explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the listener from a free-love community in upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James Garfield.
It was heaven on earth—and, some whispered, the devil’s garden.
Thousands came by trains and carriages to see this new Eden, carved from hundreds of acres of wild woodland. They marveled at orchards bursting with fruit, thick herds of Ayrshire cattle and Cotswold sheep, and whizzing mills. They gaped at the people who lived in this place—especially the women, with their queer cropped hair and shamelessly short skirts. The men and women of this strange outpost worked and slept together—without sin, they claimed.
From 1848 to 1881, a small utopian colony in upstate New York—the Oneida Community—was known for its shocking sexual practices, from open marriage and free love to the sexual training of young boys by older women. And in 1881, a one-time member of the Oneida Community—Charles Julius Guiteau—assassinated President James Garfield in a brutal crime that shook America to its core.
An Assassin in Utopia is the first book that weaves together these explosive stories in a tale of utopian experiments, political machinations, and murder. This deeply researched narrative—by bestselling author Susan Wels—tells the true, interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune; and the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield—who was assassinated after his first six months in office.
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About the author
Susan Wels is a bestselling author, historian, and journalist. Her Titanic: Legacy of the World’s Greatest Ocean Liner spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list; the book was also a Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today bestseller. Wels’s Pearl Harbor: America’s Darkest Day also was an instant bestseller.
Kitty Hendrix is from Carmel, California, and has been a professional actor and singer since childhood. She moved to New York City after college and found jobs singing in concert venues, cabarets, comedy clubs, and recording studios. She also acted in theater productions, originating more than twenty leading roles; appeared in film and television; and was a founding producer of Legacy Stage Ensemble, a theater company dedicated to the exploration of generational and social issues. Recording audiobooks since 2013 at her studio in NYC and working in nearly every genre, Kitty has consistently received excellent reviews for her work from AudioFile magazine and others. In 2018 Kitty was nominated as a finalist for an Audie Award for her narration of Daisy Miller by Henry James. She is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors' Equity.
