Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson

Journalist Hoffman (Greetings from Utopia Park) offers a vivid biography of Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944), an evangelical leader and radio pioneer whose ascendance to near-sainthood was shattered by scandal. Hoffman follows McPherson from an “isolated” childhood in rural Canada to a spiritual awakening brought about by Pentecostal preacher (and first husband) Robert Semple; tours of tent revivals along Florida’s “spiritual circuit”; and permanent residence in L.A., where her success culminated in the 1923 construction of the “Colosseum-like” Angelus Temple. McPherson’s rise was disrupted by her dramatic disappearance while swimming at Venice Beach in May 1926. The frenzied search that followed claimed the life of a rescue diver and prompted the suicide of a disciple, so the public was outraged when McPherson reappeared in Mexico three days after her own memorial service (which garnered “more than $36,000” from her congregation). McPherson claimed she had been abducted but managed to escape, a tale challenged by eyewitnesses who reported spotting her at “an oceanfront cottage with her lover.” Through felony complaints and two trials, the saga’s details get increasingly sordid (a “blind lawyer drowned in a ditch,” a “pileup of deaths,” and journalists hired “to commit blackmail”). Painting the evangelist as part grifter, part troubled soul, Hoffman illuminatingly pinpoints how McPherson “prefigures” today’s influencer-dominated world, where “pop culture language” can blend with “ideas about the divine” to manufacture new truths. It’s a revelatory study of how power, religion, and fame intersect. (Mar.)