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When the Moon Turns to Blood

Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and a Story of Murder, Wild Faith, and End Times

Contributors

By Leah Sottile

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Price

$38.00 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 21, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

WHEN THE MOON TURNS TO BLOOD examines the culture of end times paranoia and a trail of mysterious deaths surrounding former beauty queen Lori Vallow and her husband, grave digger turned doomsday novelist, Chad Daybell.

When police in Rexburg, Idaho perform a wellness check on seven J.J. Vallow and his sister, sixteen-year-old Tylee Ryan, both children are nowhere to be found. Their mother, Lori Vallow, gives a phony explanation, and when officers return the following day with a search warrant, she, too, is gone. As the police begin to close in, a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism and deceit begins to unravel.

Vallow’s case is sinuously complex. As investigators prod further, they find the accused Black Widow has an unusual number of bodies piling up around her.
 
WHEN THE MOON TURNS TO BLOOD tells a gripping story of extreme beliefs, snake oil prophets, and explores the question: if it feels like the world is ending, how are people supposed to act?

  • “In When the Moon Turns to Blood, [Sottile] uses the expertise she developed on projects such as the podcast Bundyland to turn one of the most sensational stories of the decade into a meditative look at how our surroundings influence us to the core.”
    Vanity Fair
  • "This book, wide in scope and remarkable for its timeliness, is a riveting account of the entire case (which is currently awaiting trial), including an exquisitely researched history of LDS and its fringe offshoots."
    Booklist Starred Review
  • "WHEN THE MOON TURNS TO BLOOD is a harrowing and fascinating tale of apocalyptic obsession and murder. Leah Sottile leads us down every head-shaking twist and turn of the case, an expert guide to the dark tributaries of religious extremism that run closer to the American mainstream than we’d ever like to believe."
    Jess Walter, American author of seven novels, including #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins

On Sale
Jun 21, 2022
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Twelve
ISBN-13
9781538721353

Leah Sottile

About the Author

Leah Sottile is the author of When the Moon Turns to Blood: Lori Vallow Chad Daybell, and A Story of Murder, Wild Faith and End Times. Her investigations, features and essays have been published by The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic and High Country News. She is the host of the investigative podcasts Hush, Burn Wild, Two Minutes Past Nine and Bundyville. She lives in Oregon.

Learn more about this author