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

Harvard Book Store welcomes Claire Hoffman—author of the memoir Greetings from Utopia Park and former staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone—for a discussion of her new book Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson. She will be joined in conversation by Henry Louis Gates Jr.—award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and institution builder, and the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

About Sister, Sinner

The dramatic rise, disappearance, and near-fall of Aimee Semple McPherson, America’s most famous woman evangelist.
A spring day in 1926: Aimee Semple McPherson goes for a swim in the Pacific Ocean and vanishes. She is presumed dead. Weeks later she reappears in the desert, claiming to have been kidnapped. A national media frenzy and months of investigation ensue. Who was this woman?

America’s most famous evangelist, McPherson 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? This is the story of what happened next—sex scandals, religious persecution, legal shenanigans, the unshakable faith of thousands of followers, and the race to report it all. A riveting journey into the rise of popular religion in America and life in early Hollywood, told with the flavor of the period's noir mysteries, Claire Hoffman's Sister Sinner is the thrilling story of an iconic woman, largely overlooked, who changed the world.

Praise for Sister, Sinner

“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, author of American Prometheus

“Claire Hoffman is a master storyteller. In this riveting tale, she evokes the noir style of its LA setting and revives one of the paragons of twentieth-century Christianity, Aimee Semple McPherson. The result is not only a page-turner about one of the most fascinating and mysterious lives of the era, but also a cautionary tale about the complicated, even dangerous interplay between faith and fame, messengers and the media frenzy that can ensnare them. Hoffman’s Sister, Sinner has all the elements of a suspenseful thriller and a brilliant character -study.” ―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Box: Writing the Race

“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 who continues to dominate the American religious landscape. Knowing 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

Bios 

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.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored numerous books, including most recently Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow and The Black Church, and has created more than twenty documentary films, including his groundbreaking genealogy series Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and an NAACP Image Award. This series and his PBS documentary series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War were both honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. His most recent PBS documentary is Gospel.