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

by Claire Hoffman

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 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.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Religion, True Crime, Audiobook, Biography Memoir

ebook

First published April 22, 2025

About the author

Claire Hoffman works as a magazine writer living in Los Angeles, writing for national magazines, covering culture, religion, celebrity, business and whatever else seems interesting. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone.

She has a masters degree in religion from the University of Chicago, and a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University. She serves on the board of her family foundation, the Goldhirsh Foundation, as well as the Columbia Journalism School. Claire is a native Iowan and has been meditating since she was three years old.

Reviews

[Jaidee · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.8 "Rock the Casbah" stars !!!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for an ecopy. This was released April 2025. I am providing an honest review.

Wowza ! I believe I came across this evangelist's name when reading a book about the evil Rev. Jim Jones and it sort of stayed in my head. I don't even remember in what context....so I was tres excited to get this from Netgalley and I shortlisted...

Aimee was a remarkable woman from Southwestern Ontario (love that!) who founded a huge new evangelical church in California and now has branches in over 150 countries (Foursquare churches).

This is an extremely well written, balanced and respectful biography of her life. She died by overdose at the age of 47.(in 1944)

My partner read this before me and said that this was a must read for me and (as usual) he was right. I could not turn the pages fast enough although I tried to slow myself down by reading other books alongside.

Was Aimee a healing feminist mystic or a conniving charlatan ? She had oodles of talent and charisma and drive. She was amazing at reading the room but a very poor judge of character. She gave into her greed and lust while also helping the needy and spiritually hungry in a myriad of ways.
A liar, a schemer and also a miracle worker. Her ambition and need for adulation and fame were boundless. One of the most interesting larger than life characters that I have ever read about. I was both drawn to her and repelled by her and often at the same time. What better backdrop for the majority of her life story than in corrupt and growing Los Angeles. The people surrounding her were just as interesting and bizarre as she was !

The twists and turns of her life will definitely leave a reader with emotional whiplash. I suspect that Aimee had very high functioning histrionic personality dysfunction and I also wonder if she did not also have an underlying mood bipolarity. Despite these limitations she led a grand and exciting life providing hope and sustenance to hundreds of thousands of followers while also hurting (and being hurt) by those closest to her.

Some photographs (perhaps they are in the published book) would have enhanced this superb reading experience !

Bravissima Ms. Hoffman for an amazing book !

[Blaine DeSantis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot say enough good things about this book. Author Claire Hoffman has done a superb job of researching the life and time of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. An indepth look into the entire rise and meteoric fall of the most popular evangelist in the 1920's. Aimee came from Canada and along with her mother eventually made their way to Los Angeles leaving behind them thousands of followers who used to fall to the ground and began writhing and speaking in tongues after hearing her preach. Hoffman spends much the book on the way Aimee became a huge sensation by staging immense productions that supplemented her preaching at her Four Square Church, and then how she became a celebrity and expanded her reach by owning her own radio station which her an even bigger star. And then comes one day when Aimee disappears while swimming at Venice Beach, California. After days of futile searching she is presumed dead, and then about 30 days later reappears in Mexico where she claimed she had been kidnapped. Was she or wasn't she? Was she on a secret vacation from the ministry? On a lovers getaway? Oh how this case filled the nations papers and airwaves. Multiple legal proceedings and entanglements followed and things never were the same. All this is expertly related by Claire Hoffman who sets forth the details in a book that I could not put down until I came to the sad ending.

[Kate Cedras · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drama, drama, drama.

If you love drama, abductions, twists & turns and more this is for you. I really appreciated the way this story was written and kept you wanting more. Fascinated by the fact that it’s a true story about someone’s life and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest review.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aimee Semple McPherson was a wholey or holy American invention. She was a self-made woman in a time when women couldn't even vote in most states. She mainstreamed the underground Religious movement of Pentecostalism. She used radio, movies, and newspapers to get followers as well as worldwide tours. She also had an idea that while she never was able to accomplish it was an extremely futuristic vision of doing television evangelization.

Her church had everyday men and women and it was not segregated which was unheard of at that time. Lots of famous people and soon-to-be-famous people attended her church such as Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. As children Richard Nixon and Marilyn Monroe attended. Actor Anthony Quinn claimed Aimee changed his life and he spoke highly of her his entire life.

Like most religious leaders Aimee was a scammer. Not all religious leaders are scammers but from experience growing up in a very religious family, most are. Any religious leader who earns vast sums of money is suspicious to me. To paraphrase Jesus, "It is easier for an elephant to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven". Aimee was bringing in millions of dollars a year and regularly sleeping with parishioners...and parishioners ' husbands. She faked her death and then claimed she was kidnapped all so she could run off with someone else's husband....And it only made her more famous and richer.

I have special smoke for the Pentecostal "church"... it's a cult. I have family members who fled that cult. If my calling it a cult hurts your feelings, I don't care at all. And people like Aimee took this cult from a small underground movement and turned it into a religion with 650 million practitioners.

Claire Hoffman did a great job. I had to put it down several times because of my personal history with Aimee's cult. I highly recommend it.

[MM Suarez · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Aimee thinks I’m a great sinner,” said Guinan. “Well, I think she’s a great sinner too. Only I don’t blame her for it. We have our separate rackets.” - Texas Guinan, American Actress

Like a lot of people I had never heard of Aimee Semple McPherson but I selected the book because reading about con men/women, religious or otherwise has always appealed to me. I thought I was going to enjoy this book more than I did, but unfortunately while it is aptly written, and appears to be well researched, it just didn't do it for me. Other than the fact that Aimee was a woman, doing what was in those days almost exclusively within the purview of men, she really wasn't all that different from her male counterparts. Cloaked in the white gown representing purity, selling abstinence, humility and healing to her delusional followers, while engaging in tawdry affairs, spending the churches money on a lavish lifestyle, and even faking a kidnapping to run off with her lover for a few days. Holy cow, this girl would have given Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker a run for their money!

"Chaplin thought of Aimee as a “devil- pelter,” someone who had “got a white nightie and started a new religion.”

[Elizabeth Kerns · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought-provoking and worthwhile read. i grew up in the Foursquare church, but knew very little about Aimee. the author worked hard to be neutral in her telling & did a great job contextualizing Aimee sociologically and historically—i learned a lot about the development of LA as a city, too! there’s a bit of a blind spot in this book re Christianity and Aimee’s engagement with and depiction of God (the author did great with the rhetoric but seemed to miss the theology), but that’s hard to do as outsider, so I’ll give her a pass on that. as a study of the effects of fame and the relationship between faith and celebrity, this book is great! and as a story, it was a very engaging read.

[Haven · Rating 4 out of 5]

bonkers that I am just now learning about this woman- who was basically the first megachurch pastor. This book was really well done, and told in a narrative fashion, which made a really multifaceted nonfiction topic really digestible.

[Monnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a variety of reasons - none of them religious - I've always been fascinated by the "Come let me wrap ye in the cloak of the Lord" televangelists who pretty much ruled the Sunday-morning airwaves back in my day - names like Rex Humbard, Ernest Angley and Dr. Robert Schuller. Watching them spit out their fire-and-brimstone messages, invite viewers to come to the altar to be "saved" (or healed) and, of course, make pleas for money was, if nothing else, always a hoot.

But years before their time was an evangelist who I'd call a trailblazer for a variety of reasons: Aimee Semple McPherson. Although her ministry was going strong on the radio when I was a youngster, I never heard her (she died in 1944, when I was but a toddler). But I certainly heard OF her, if only that there was some kind of scandal involving her ministry; so when I got the chance to read the story of her life, I threw my arms to the sky and offered thanks (in this case, to the publisher, via NetGalley).

And what an interesting ministry - and life - she had. Plagued with scandal, intrigue, and, yes, love (at least for all things heavenly), her story just kept getting more intricate and involved as the pages flew by. Among the initial revelations are that she was married twice despite preaching so-called "old-time religion; she was 35 years old in 1926, when thousands flocked to her Angelus Temple (a.k.a. Million Dollar Temple) in California; her sudden disappearance, and presumed drowning in the ocean, most likely was faked and has never been fully resolved.

It's the parts before and after that disappearance, though, that are fascinating, at least to me - especially the complicated relationship between Aimee and her "stage mom," Minnie Kennedy, and her two children with first husband Robert Semple at age 17, Rolf and Roberta - the latter presumed to continue Aimee's ministry had those ocean waters actually claimed her life.

Along her life's somewhat erratic journey, she became wildly popular on the born-again Christian circuit - being dubbed, mostly by her detractors, as the P.T. Barnum of Christianity. It is the "stuff" of that journey, of course, that fills the pages of this book - but also of course, I'll leave it up to other readers to find and enjoy them, hopefully as much as I did. Oh, and there's an extensive list of sources at the end as well.

[Todd Voter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unprecedented triumph and self inflicted tragedy for a giant of American history

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

The name Aimee Semple McPherson may not be familiar to many folks today, but at one time, she was one of the best-known evangelists and celebrities in America. Although she died at the relatively young age of 54 in 1944, she was an amazing figure. Though I do not share her theology or politics, I have long been fascinated by her life, having read most of her biographies, made pilgrimages to her church, and wrote an article on her theology. Interestingly enough, though I spent almost six years as a member of the denomination she founded, I rarely, if ever, heard her name mentioned. Perhaps there are reasons for that. However, I believe she is a figure worth knowing about, for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that she was a pioneer when it comes to women preachers.

At a time when women were not allowed to be ordained or preach, even in Mainline Protestant churches, she was one of the best-known preachers, with a huge following, as she built one of the largest church buildings in America and a denomination. She was also well-known for her scandals, including her 1926 disappearance.

There have been numerous biographies of Sister Aimee (as she was known by her followers), some of which have been hagiographical and others highly critical, often focusing on the scandals. Claire Hoffman has written the most recent biography of Aimee, joining those written by Edith Blumhoffer (Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister (Library of Religious Biography, Daniel Epstein ( Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson), and Matthew Sutton (Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America), which I believe are the best. Each of these four biographies offers something different, making them all worth reading. Of the four books, Hoffman's book "Sister, Sinner" provides the greatest focus on Aimee's infamous disappearance and its aftermath. Although the title of the book suggests the possibility of a sensationalist take on her life, Hoffman offers a balanced portrait of this fascinating, charismatic, talented woman, who had a shadow side. One of the contributing factors to the focus on the disappearance was her access to court records of Aimee's pretrial hearing, records that only the Foursquare archives has a full copy.

What we have here is a sympathetic but realistic portrait of a life that was full of contradictions. Aimee was a powerful evangelist who preached to millions over the years, both in person and on the radio, something she pioneered. Yet, despite her piety that was expressed in her fundamentalist beliefs, especially in the last twenty years of her life was given to worldliness, which got her into trouble. Part of her problem was her loneliness. She married young and became a widow before she was twenty, while on the mission field. She would marry twice more, but both ended badly. Yet, not only did she pioneer as a woman evangelist, she was committed to sending out women to serve as pastors, with her bible college producing a majority of women graduates. Her staff was largely made up of women. Until their breakup, her most important partner in her ministry was her mother, Minnie, who helped keep her grounded.

Hoffman spends the first third of the book focused on her origins and early ministry. Then she spends a little over a third focused on the events that include and surround the disappearance, offering both Aimee's own story and that of the others involved, including the district attorney who prosecuted her for perjury and fraud, as well as her alleged lover, Kenneth Ormiston. Hoffman offers a rather full picture of this rather brief part of her life. Then, the last part of the book, maybe a quarter of the book in all, offers a picture of life after the disappearance and the court cases. What we see in these later years is a rather broken woman who ended up being controlled by others.

I appreciate Hoffman's biography because she brings to life this woman who, as I noted earlier, was full of contradictions in life. While she was not perfect, I think that if we take to heart Hoffman's portrayal, we will come back with a sympathetic view of this charismatic evangelist who pioneered women's ministry at a time when women were not given a significant place in the church.

[Anna Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm rating this 4 stars, because it did seem to drag a fair bit for the last 1/3 or so. Flashbacks to my childhood in a Pentecostal church as a kid with this one and damn, I was definitely laughing at some of the inner thoughts from Aimee's letters. Basically this is the story of a con-woman who was a famous evangelist and radio personality in the 1920s. I feel like her mother definitely set her up for failure as an adult, telling her she was "chosen" by God. It was super interesting to see her trajectory from devout missionary to a celebrity, basically on par with a movie star (very secular, very hypocritical). Overall, if you have an interest in the time period, or in psychology (or even just religious figures) it's a worthwhile read.

[Jeff Brawner · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a quick read, that is non-fiction, but reads like a fictional narrative, this is your book. As I read this work I kept saying, "how could I have never heard of McPherson before this book?" I have probably come across her name in one of my studies, but the depth of her life was lost in me in previous books I've read. Hoffman adeptly helps the reader see how Aimee went from a nobody, to a global phenomena, to a broken woman, ending with a woman who might have begun to find herself again. I have personally seen the impact of her work overseas (the Foursquare Church). I don't line up with everything in their theology, but the fact that God used a broken vessel (McPherson), to start a movement that genuinely impacts communities across the world was quite thought provoking.
Hoffman also paints a wonderful picture of how hubris, money, and power can cause someone with the best of intentions to lose their way. So much of her earlier choices in life certainly pointed to later problems- particularly her lack of in-depth study of Scripture as well as her choices in husbands/companionship. Still, this reader finished the book with a touch of sympathy toward Aimee, even though I'm sure so much of her personality would have been very difficult to deal with on a day to day basis. Thank goodness my personality is perfect and I'm never difficult to deal with either. :)

[Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of Aimee and the idea that she was able to become a female evangelist maybe on par with Billy Graham albeit in a totally different era of the 1920s was of interest to me. Women had just barely gotten the vote when she was rising up which makes her story all the more amazing.

I’m always interested in the people chosen by The People to lead them to the promised land. They do often seem rather theatrical and Aimee is no exception.

So one part fascinating and one part very much lost in the research I arrive at 3 stars.

Her church lives on and called Foursquare Church. I think it does rather well still today.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pairing this with Epstein's bio gives a full picture of Sister Aimee's full life. What a complicated woman. What Hoffman does well here, as an entertainment journalist, is help me see how ahead of her time Sister Aimee was in so many ways. She would have killed it on social media.

[Leia Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why did I not know any of this story? I have so many thoughts and feelings.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and very well paced, I loved learning about Aimee (had never heard of her which, after reading how influential she was, I was surprised by!), and now I need to know more. Excellent biography!

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a Sinner, Amy Semple McPherson took advantage of poor and unfortunate people drawn to her preaching. She used the small sums the people donated to live and travel in luxury. She used her looks and charisma to draw in followers. Complete POS.

[Susan Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story. A girl from a village just outside of London Ontario attends an evangelical meeting and is transformed. Her mother had earmarked her for a religious life with the Salvation Army but when she heard the man who would become her husband, Aimee knew where her life would lead. In many ways she was right. When it came to the religious fervour that she was able to create, there were no at the time to compare to her. She created a new religious group that even today is still growing. It might have been called a cult today but there is no doubt in reading this biography that she was sincere in her desire to help people. In that respect she was quite amazing. The fact that she was a woman in that time made her success even more unusual in a misogynistic world. She would have had a challenging life had to she stuck to the straight and narrow but Aimee was all too human..

She was swayed by the fame and the money and all that went with it. She was guilty of many of the deadly sins but lust and coveting someone’s husband led her on a perilous journey that she made even more hazardous by decisions she made. Not unlike today’s politicians and religious leaders, she doubled down on her frailties and mistakes. Through many a destroyed relationship, lawsuits galore and the adulation of her public, she still died alone.

It is a fascinating story that tells in great detail her rise to the pinnacle and her fall from it. And yet, what she built still stands. A cautionary tale, perhaps. But she was a visionary in so many respects and she created many of the things we now take for granted. Four purrs and two paws up.

[Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Americans love a con artist. Same as it ever was.

[Matthew Messner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compassionate and honest examination of a remarkable person.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a part of the Foursquare Church from birth to my early 20s and then back for a few years in my early 30s. Aimee Semple McPherson was someone I'd heard about all my life. One of my grandmas, my husband's grandpa, one of my uncles, and my mom all went to LIFE Bible College. As a little girl, I remember that my Sunday School class was in a field in a wagon until they built the "real" church. I remember revivals at night with lots of people shouting and getting saved and being filled with the Holy Spirit. They always had an altar call and for some reason, they always counted how many people got saved. This church was truly a "holy roller" type church with Sunday night services being wild with healings and people speaking in tongues and much talk about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus. It was mostly our pastor's wife (who was also a pastor) who led these Sunday night services. To be honest, for a little girl, it was kind of scary.

We changed to a different Foursquare Church when I was in 8th grade, and I loved it. There were more kids my age, and it was a little more tame. They still had speaking in tongues and altar calls, but it wasn't as "holy roller." We went here after I met a great group of girls at summer church camp. At camp, we had to go to church in the morning and in the evening. The purpose of the camp leaders was to save all of the sinners and to try to get as many kids filled with the Holy Spirit as possible. Of course, our purpose as kids was to have fun. We had a few hours to do this after lunch. I actually loved camp even with all the church meetings. I mean how many times can you get saved, right?

But back to Aimee. Even though I grew up Foursquare, reading this book made me understand why my churches and camp were the way they were. No one explicitly told me the tenets of the Foursquare religion while I was growing up; but in reading this book, I realized that it all came from her. She was a force to be reckoned with when it came to her beliefs in having a relationship with God. This book explained a lot for me. I learned so many things that I didn't know about her and the religion chosen by my parents. She was also kind of odd ball, and I think the book shows that she definitely had some issues. But none of this was written as an opinion of the author. The book is fact-filled and backed up by many, many resources including books, newspapers, Foursquare publications, etc.

The story of Angelus Temple is a big part of the book. I went there a couple of times, and I always thought it was a bit creepy. I didn't have a good feeling when I was there. It was kind of showy and huge, over the top. The "Crutch Room" was eerie. She called it the Miracle Room. You could feel her presence. The author does a great job of telling the stories about what went on at the temple.

When reading about the kidnapping and her life after that, I couldn't help but feel sad. She lost her way. I really didn't know much about that part of her life. In an interview I saw on YouTube with the author, she said that the Foursquare organization has distanced itself from Aimee. I can see why after reading this book. A lot of Foursquare churches don't even have Foursquare in their names anymore. It is my choice to not attend church anymore because of my disillusionment with organized religion. But I have got to give Aimee props. She had a vision and a purpose and made a way to carry out those dreams. A lot of people were helped by her outreach programs and good deeds. But she was human and humans aren't perfect. Her life was far from perfect.

If I'm all over the place on this review, I apologize. It was a book that hit close to home, and it's difficult to organize my many thoughts. I will say though that I found the book to be a forthright and sincere account of a once famous woman whose beliefs were a big part of the way I was raised. I learned so much and understand more. For that, I highly recommend this book.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Claire Hoffman is an American journalist with a divinity school background; her 2025 book Sister, Sinner is an in-depth biography of Canadian-American evangelist and Foursquare Church founder Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), specifically focused on Semple McPherson's controversial disappearance for five weeks in 1926, at the height of her fame, which spawned years of legal scrutiny.

I had previously read about Semple McPherson as one of the central figures profiled in Gary Krist's The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles (an excellent book about early LA that I'd highly recommend to anyone interested in that place/era). Semple McPherson was definitely a pioneer for her time -- a woman in a traditionally male-dominated religious leadership role; a nationally-recognized celebrity before the Golden Age of Hollywood through a glamorous image she meticulously cultivated; a proto-influencer almost a hundred years ago. Her disappearance, though, seems (to me, based on the evidence presented) straight out of the Sherri Papini playbook -- overwhelmed 30-something sick of the pressures of her life decides to escape to cavort with a lover, then realizes she has to get back to her life, miraculously re-emerges, and concocts an elaborate hoax to explain her absence, only to have it explode and backfire spectacularly. Hoffman, to her credit, is as fair and nonjudgmental as possible in her research, and with her treatment of Semple McPherson throughout (she explains in the afterward that she was granted access to extensive archival material through the Foursquare Church and Semple McPherson's estate).

My statistics:
Book 364 for 2025
Book 2290 cumulatively

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The early years of the 20th century saw the world appear to be coming apart: the Titanic, World War I, and later on the Great Depression. How to make sense of it all? Enter one of the greatest fabulists and show-persons ever to live. Her name may no longer be in common usage, but she literally set the stage for every religious revival, itinerant preacher and megachurch since.
Amy Semple McPherson was born in a small town in Canada to a teenage mother and a father 30 years older. At 17 she heard a sermon, fell in love with the preacher, married, and then moved to China to try and spread the good word. Within just a few years, she became a wife, a mother, and then a widow when her husband died suddenly. Making her way back across the ocean and then across North America, she heard itinerant preachers and decided that was the best way to get the word out. With her second husband, they began a trip down and across America until they came to Los Angeles. Now tired of the traveling life and the mother of two children, they decided to open their own church, huge and fittingly in the shape of a megaphone. With Hollywood literally right next-door, she had all the ingredients she needed to put on a show the likes of which nobody had ever seen before.
And did she ever. She used everything, including costumes, actors, motorcycles, and even wild animals. Her personal charisma more than made up for whatever doubts anybody might have. Even after her second husband got tired of the showy and public life she embraced, she continued on, more successful than ever, as a single mother and a divorcee, almost unheard of in those times.
What brought her down was a huge scandal which not only included lawsuits but several deaths as well, several public and messy love affairs, and addictions. But whether saint or sinner, evangelist or exhibitionist, it would be tough to imagine the American religious landscape without her enormous contributions. She was also way ahead of her time, welcoming people of all races but especially by living life according to her own set of rules. Her Angelus Temple still stands.

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

One hundred years ago Amy Semple McPherson was a really famous person. A famous woman; famous as an evangelist. Famous for starting a pentecostal denomination (The Church of the Foursquare Gospel) that lives on today. Her son took over her ministry and lived until 1988. The temple, The Angles Temple, she and her mother Minnie (a veteran of the Salvation Army), built still thrives in Los Angeles today. Interestingly, Amy was Canadian who married an Irish preacher and went off to China with him. They both contracted malaria and her husband succumbed to complications. Amy returned, married another fellow then left him to barnstorm Florida as a preacher. Her husband joined her later but then decided the life wasn’t for him and they divorced. Amy was gaining somewhat of a reputation under the guidance of her mother Minnie and they decided to move to the Golden State where Amy achieved great success. They were very entrepreneurial building the Temple and starting a radio station. But success and fame are difficult for some people as is the loss of privacy that comes with it. Amy was apparently having an affair with the fellow who ran her radio station and in one of the most curious events of the 1920’s seemed to disappear into the Pacific Ocean while on a swim. Her mother was convinced she had drowned after hundreds of people and organizations failed to find her body. There was a memorial and fund raising. But then Amy showed up in a Mexican border town claiming she had been kidnapped and tortured. She had made an escape through a window after cutting her cords with a tin can and walked miles through the desert. She stuck to this story even though it didn’t pass the smell test. Her dress and shoes didn’t show any wear. She wasn’t even thirsty or sweating. Authorties investigated. Witnesses had seen her at different locations during the month. She was often identified by her “thick ankles.” (Amy was extremely sensitive about her ankles even investigating the possibility of corrective surgery. Not possible).There was a trial. Amy had an answer for every charge. She was acquitted and carried on even though her own mother didn’t really believe the story. One would think this would hamper the progress of her mission but it did not. Her biggest mistake was having a falling out with her mother who was the financial brains of the operation. Amy had lots of bad money making ideas. Somehow she managed to keep going even after alienating her daughter who she had picked as her successor. In the last years Amy did lots of traveling and preaching. She married again but that didn’t work out either. Her popularity continued even though the Angeles Temple teetered on thin financial ice. Her life ended at age 54 from what might have been an accidental overdose. The best writing in this book is in an afterward where the author displays some real literary flourishes. The book itself has a ChatGPT feel to it. After finishing I discovered a number of YouTube videos that tell the story in not as much detail but efficiently. I tried to get a look at those ankles but Amy was adept at keeping them covered.

[Lyon.Brit.andthebookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! What a biography friends! I had never heard the name Aimee Semple McPherson and I’m so happy that The Book Gang Podcast @themomadvice put this one on my radar! Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and
Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson is one I picked up on audio and quickly became absorbed into the story about America’s Most famous woman evangelist.

The author Claire Hoffman has dove deep into the research of a bit of a controversial figure. I was fully immersed in the thrilling journey from the start. Learning about how Aimee came to be all that she was and her startling disappearance that shook her followers and her jaw dropping return that lead to lawsuits and family fall outs. This read very much like a narrative NF and the dramatic history shared was one I could not put down!

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[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biggest take away I had from this book was the insight into the Cult of Personality. The same one that many seem to be victims of in the present. Aimee had such a hold on her followers that she could do the same things she preached against, but they still followed her anywhere. When she obviously faked her own kidnapping, they still supported her unconditionally! Maybe this is a book certain people should read? Maybe it would open their eyes to what is going on in their own life?

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the author did an excellent job of staying neutral throughout the entire unfolding of this story. I did not sense the slightest snicker or zealous sympathy which was a wonderfully unbiased reporting. It astounds me how some people can self-create and gain such a strong following, but I suppose that the times surrounding Semple McPherson's rise helped to create her. Amazing story and then the disappointment that she, too, had feet of clay.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crazy story about a female evangelist who had several marriages, and staged her own kidnapping. Her followers forgave everything and never wavered in their support. Her church and denomination that she founded are still going strong. I started to understand why American Christians act like they do- it’s all about the show.

[Тaniia Тkachuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ця книга має все, щоб отримати мої 5 зірок - інтригуючий початок, bad ass головна героїня, релігійний культ, детективна історія, трошки одержимості «товстими» щиколотками та багато паралелей із сучасністю.
Чудова робота авторки, яка дослідила багато джерел і показала неоднозначність постаті Еймі.

[KATHY Dorris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became aware of Amy’s story by watching the newest iteration of the Perry Mason story. The portrayal there was more glamorized. The Amy portrayed in this book was determined, at times flawed, and purposeful. I found myself wondering what today’s social media would make of her.