When the Moon Turns to Blood

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 13, 2022

Investigative journalist Sottile debuts with a look at a series of horrific murders that's marred by her frequently injecting herself into the narrative and drawing sweeping, unsupported statements about the tragedy's meaning. In 2019, Lori Vallow's 16-year-old daughter, Tylee, and her seven-year-old autistic son, J.J., were murdered, their corpses buried on the Idaho property of Vallow's fifth husband, Chad Daybell, the author of multiple books about the apocalypse. The bodies were only found following efforts by the children's grandparents to contact them, efforts stymied by Vallow's multiple lies about their whereabouts. Vallow and Daybell have both been charged with the murders and are suspected of killing other family members. Sottile opens with a prologue about unrelated crimes, a 2005 triple murder, which she presents as a learning experience for this case ("I had a feeling that one day, when I was ready, I'd need to know how to unwind a complicated case like it and make sense of some kind of similar horror"). This case is especially resistant to glib explanations, with a determination as to Vallow's mental state and fitness for trial still unsettled, as well as the motive for the murders; nonetheless, Sottile opines that "the case could be an allegory for the rest of the world, for everything happening right now in this country." Her attempts to impose broader significance will fall flat for many. John Glatt's The Doomsday Mother: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the End of an American Family remains the definitive account to date.