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The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson
by Claire Hoffman
Sister, Sinner chronicles the dramatic rise, disappearance, and near-fall of Aimee Semple McPherson, America's most famous woman evangelist.
On a spring day in 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson wandered into the Pacific Ocean and vanished. Weeks later she reappeared in the desert, claiming to have been kidnapped. A national media frenzy and months of investigation ensued. Who was this woman?
America's most famous evangelist, McPherson was a sophisticated marketer who used spectacle, storytelling, and the newest technology―including her own radio station―to bring God's message to the masses. Her innovations brought Pentecostalism into the mainstream, paved the way for televangelists, and shaped the future of American Christianity. Her Angelus Temple in Echo Park, Los Angeles, can be called the first megachurch. Her Foursquare Church continues, with more than eight million faithful around the world.
But after her disappearance, as crowds gathered at the water's edge, people asked: Was McPherson everybody's saintly sister, or a con-artist sinner? The story of what happened next―sex scandals, religious persecution, legal shenanigans, the seemingly unshakable faith of thousands of followers, and the race to cover it all―runs through the center of Claire Hoffman's thrilling Sister, Sinner.
A riveting journey into the rise of popular religion in America and life in early Hollywood, and told with the flavor of the period's noir mysteries, this is an unforgettable story of an iconic woman, largely overlooked, who changed the world.
"A revelatory study of how power, religion, and fame intersect." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[An] empathetic―and dramatic―account of [McPherson's] life...Hoffman's discerning biography is as much a work about faith, self-mythologizing, and ambition as it is, in Hoffman's words, 'a cautionary tale about fame.'" ―Kirkus Reviews
"Sister, Sinner is a wild ride of a biography―part mystery story and part scandal―but also a penetrating examination of the rise of evangelical religion in America. Along the way, Claire Hoffman explains much about popular culture in America today." ―Kai Bird, coauthor of American Prometheus
"From the instant that Claire Hoffman casts Aimee Semple McPherson into the sea in an emerald-green swimsuit, she sets us on an extraordinary journey into the makings of a modern prophet. McPherson's story is essential to understanding the Pentecostal movement. With rigor, grace, and moxie, Hoffman renders its complicated founder in Technicolor." ―Eliza Griswold, author of Circle of Hope
This information about Sister, Sinner was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Claire Hoffman is the author of the memoir Greetings from Utopia Park and a journalist reporting for national magazines on culture, religion, celebrity, business, and more. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. She is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, and has an MA in religion from the University of Chicago and an MA in journalism from Columbia University. She serves on the boards of the Columbia School of Journalism, ProPublica, and the Brooklyn Public Library.
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