The book was edited and written by Beatrice Sparks, and is based partly on the life of 16-year-old Alden Barrett from Pleasant Grove, Utah, who died by suicide in 1971.

[3] In the mid-to-late 1970s, Jay is a religious, depressed teenager who begins a journal after being persuaded by his Sunday School teachers.

Jay nicknames his diary Judas and begins writing poetry venting his feelings about conformity, and discusses his parents, who he frequently gets in trouble with.

Jay falls in love with a girl named Debbie Dale, and begins writing odes to her in his journal.

Regardless, his crush becomes gradually more intense, to the point where Jay copes with marijuana when Debbie goes to Phoenix with her parents for her birthday.

Debbie begins to ask him to lend her amphetamines from the pharmacy that he works at, and makes him cover up the theft by filling the capsules with powdered milk.

Jay's guilt begins to worsen when he imagines scenarios of people being given the false, ineffective capsules to help their intense pain.

He especially feels guilty after hearing about his Aunt Laurel being in intense pain from cancer, to the point where she was "crying and begging him [Jay's dad] to give her something and make her die."

He talks so easily about intuition, meditation, ESP, auras, life after death, the oversoul, how much karma a person must erase before they are liberated, how they can better influence the world in the new age, how they can recognize their soul mate, mysticism, esoteric science, hidden teachings of the ancients, the equations of life, etc.Jay is confused by Pete, but eventually claims to witness Pete move a chair with "mental powers" and make a wart on his finger disappear.

Jay is upset when he is informed that he will soon be released from the detention center, but his perspective on his family soon improves, and he begins missing them and anticipating arriving home.

Jay, Brad, and Dell are eventually roped in by missionaries sent by Pete, who gives them a list of kids to try to bring into the cult.

After the wedding, Jay's lifestyle becomes more reckless when he and Tina begin attacking cattle and bathing in blood to baptize themselves.

Both Brad and Dell later die in car accidents, seemingly linked to the occult's practices, and Jay becomes sick when he goes to their funerals.

[citation needed] A rock opera titled A Place in the Sun was created and performed in 1997 and 1998 by Utah band Grain, led by Bryan Hall.

[5][6] In 2022 and 2023, Hall and his band, Bay of Pigs, began live performances of another rock opera telling Alden Barrett's story.