First Kill Your Family is the only book published in American to reveal the full story behind the rise of Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army. After savaging northern Uganda for twenty years and slaughtering thousands and mutilating many more, Kony fled in 2006 to some of the most remote territory in Africa. In a largely inaccessible region bordered by the failed states of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Congo, Kony and his cult-like army of child killers continue to terrorize local populations. Most recently, they've turning the the wholesale slaughter of elephants in the jungles of northern Congo to fund their army.
The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witch doctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord's Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities--murdering their parents, friends, and relatives--and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor.
Eichstaedt takes readers into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child "brides," and other victims. He examines the cult-like convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief in witchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's virulent cycle of violence.
Peter Eichstaedt is the winner of the 2009 Colorado Book Award for First Kill Your Family and the winner of the 2015 International Latino Book Award for The Dangerous Divide. He has reported from locations worldwide, including Afghanistan, Albania, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. His most recent book is Borderland, a thriller about a journalist who sacrifices everything as he tracks the U.S.-Mexico borderlands for the killers of his father and uncovers a cabal of corrupt DEA operatives controlled by a man poised to win the White House. His books include The Dangerous Divide: Peril and Promise Along the US-Mexico Border; Above the Din of War; Consuming the Congo; First Kill Your Family; If You Poison Us; and Pirate State. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
