See You in September – Facts

Most of the events in the book happen in New Zealand. New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island and the South Island —and more than 700 smaller islands.

When Cassy meets the people from Gethsemane, she and her boyfriend are hitchhiking to reach Taupo. Taupō is a town on the shore of Lake Taupo in the central North Island of New Zealand.

Aden offers Cassy a lift to Rotorua, which is the closest town near Gethsemane. Rotorua is a city on the southern shores of Lake Rotorua from which the city takes its name, in the Bay of Plenty Region of New Zealand’s North Island.

The farm where Gesethmane is is on Lake Tarawera. Lake Tarawera is the largest of a series of lakes which surround the volcano Mount Tarawera in the North Island of New Zealand.

When Cassy first contacts her parents, she says that she is staying on a farm, working for food and board, which she calls wwoofing. World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), or Willing Workers on Organic Farms, is a loose network of national organizations that facilitate homestays on organic farms. As of June 2016, Australia with 2,600 hosts has the most host farms and enterprises, followed by New Zealand with 2,340 and United States with 2,052 hosts.

When Diana and Mike contact the expert on cults, they learn about about cults that ended up in tragedy. One was in Jonestown. The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name “Jonestown”, was a remote settlement in Guyana, established by the Peoples Temple, a San Francisco-based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. The settlement became internationally known when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 909 individuals died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by Jones and some Peoples Temple members on an audio tape of the event.

Another case was Waco. The Waco siege, also known as the Waco massacre, was the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the religious sect Branch Davidians. It was carried out by the U.S. federal government, Texas state law enforcement, and the U.S. military, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The incident began when the ATF attempted to serve a search and arrest warrant on the ranch. An intense gunfight erupted, resulting in the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians. A siege lasting 51 days was initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Eventually, the FBI launched an assault and initiated a tear gas attack in an attempt to force the Branch Davidians out of the ranch. Shortly thereafter, the Mount Carmel Center quickly became engulfed in flames. The fire resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh himself.

Another tragedy was the one of Heaven’s Gate. Heaven’s Gate was an American UFO religious cult based near San Diego. On March 26, 1997, deputies of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group in a house in a San Diego suburb. They had participated in a mass suicide, a coordinated series of ritual suicides, in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp.

The cult expert also mentions Charles Manson. Charles Milles Manson (born Maddox, November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal and cult leader. In mid-1967, he formed what became known as the “Manson Family”, a quasi-commune based in California. His followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. Although the motive for the murders was disputed by Manson, the Los Angeles County District Attorney believed that Manson intended to start a race war.

Another name is Aum Shinrikyo. Aleph , formerly Aum Shinrikyoç, is a Japanese doomsday cult and terrorist organisation founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto attack the previous year.