An Assassin in Utopia : The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder

This true crime�odyssey�explores a�forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history,�leading�the reader 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. Juxtaposed to their stories is the odd tale of Garfield's�assassin, the demented Charles Julius Guiteau, who was connected to all of them in�extraordinary, surprising ways. Against a vivid backdrop of ambition, hucksterism,�epidemics, and spectacle,�the book's interwoven stories fuse together�in the climactic murder of President Garfield in 1881-at the same time as the�Oneida Community collapsed. Colorful and compelling,�An Assassin�in�Utopia�is a page-turning odyssey through America's nineteenth-century�cultural and political landscape.�