Title: Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray’s Inner Circle
Author: Connie Joy
Genre: Self-help, personal transformation, new-age
The gist: A former Dream Team member tells of her personal transformation while discussing her perceptions of James BBQ Ray.
Cover art: It looks to be a picture of the sweat lodge James Ray provided at one of his Spiritual Warrior retreats, most likely the one the author attended.
Summary:
Follow Connie Joy inside the seminars and once-in-a-lifetime trips to Egypt and Peru for an up close look at the transformative work of a charismatic teacher – and the underlying danger of mixing up the message with messenger!
In 2007, Connie participated in Ray’s sweat lodge, a Native American ceremonial sauna meant to be a place of spiritual renewal and mental and physical healing. In reality it was just a test of human endurance for Connie and the other participants. Her prediction that someone could be seriously hurt came true in October 2009 when three people died and 18 participants were injured during a sweat lodge run by James Arthur Ray and his staff.
After injuries at his previous events, why didn’t Ray get the message he was literally playing with fire?
Connie and her husband attended 27 events over three years presented by James Arthur Ray, “Rock Star of Personal Transformation.” As this book is released, Ray is charged with three counts of manslaughter and faces a criminal trial in Arizona as well as numerous civil suits.
The best part: Connie is willing to share deeply personal thoughts and feelings with the reader.
The worst part: This is not my genre. I like to keep tabs on the information circulating about James Ray, but this is so very not my genre. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with self-help, new-agey type stuff but personally I rarely stick more than a pinky toe in the genre.
Characters: The story is told auto-biographically and reads like a very detailed personal journal.
Plot: There isn’t so much of a plot as there is a mostly sequential retelling of a series of James Ray seminars. This is a perfectly logical order to tell a story in of course, but I’ve heard so many personal interviews that it’s really hard to hold my interest any more. This is quite probably a uniquely personal quirk that wouldn’t affect the average reader, though.
Setting: James Ray events happen in many different places, most of which are exotic to some degree or another.
Writing style: I’m not sure I can really be objective about this because I don’t often enjoy the genre nor am I familiar with its specific tropes and expectations. That being said, if you want to know a lot of details about what happened at James Ray events then this is the book for you.
In which I babble: Since I started covering the James Ray scandal many, many, many people told me they were going to write a book about it. So far, Connie is the only one who did so. It’s nice to see the final product that she emailed me about so long ago.
Publisher: Pen & Publish, Inc.
Purchase the book here.
Live stream the James Ray Deathlodge trial from CNN here.
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