In Claire Hoffman’s first book, “Greetings From Utopia Park,” she describes growing up as a follower of Transcendental Meditation. Her second book, “Sister, Sinner” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a biography of Aimee Semple McPherson, the evangelist whose preaching helped turn Pentecostalism from a tiny, fringe movement to the fastest-growing Christian sect in the world.
“I didn’t grow up Christian,” says Hoffman. “I don’t have personal experience as a Pentecostal.” But attending services in Pentecostal churches she witnessed congregants whose powerful individual experiences reminded her of what T.M. also promises: “You’re not going to church to hear from someone on a stage who’s telling you about the divine, the divine is connecting into you. And that’s really powerful for people.”
An American religion born at the turn of the 20th century, Pentecostalism was a faith that emphasized a personal connection with Jesus, evidenced by believers speaking in tongues and by leaders who offered divine healing to the sick. McPherson, who joined the church as a 17-year-old bride to a charismatic young minister in 1908, grew famous for her ecstatic preaching style and wild ambition. Once she settled in Los Angeles in 1918 McPherson became a bona fide celebrity in the city that invented them, renowned for the theatrical services at the megachurch she erected, and widely influential due to her pioneering use of radio to reach the masses.
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And yet, Hoffman points out, few contemporary Americans even know her name today. Part of that, she says, is that McPherson was a complex person, difficult to slot into a conventional role. “I feel like you don’t see that as much in women in history,” she adds, “where they get to be both good and bad. Did she make some unbelievable mistakes? Absolutely. But she also achieved all these big monumental things.”
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McPherson’s life also illustrates the way fame can warp a person’s life, Hoffman says. “I think the fame and the ambition really intertwine, but she has this incredible legacy, too. I mean, there’s one year where she preached to 1.5 million people; something like one out of 10 Americans had seen her preach.”
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Claire Hoffman will read at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30, at Harvard Book Store.
And now for some recommendations….
Susannah Cahalan has set herself a nearly impossible task in “The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary” (Viking), which attempts to nail down the enigmatic woman who flitted through nearly every countercultural movement (or moment) of the post-war era. Rosemary was a stewardess, a seeker, and a veteran of multiple marriages, divorces, and abortions when she met Timothy Leary at Millbrook, a center for LSD experimentation. She walked in wearing high-top sneakers and carried a volume by Wittgenstein; he fell for her immediately. Cahalan (“Brain on Fire”) is the perfect guide on this very trippy ride.
Sophie Gilbert’s cultural criticism in the Atlantic made her a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2022 and earned her a National Magazine Award in 2024. With the publication of “Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves” (Penguin Press), Gilbert’s poised to reach even more readers — lucky them, and us. In exploring the years that saw millennial feminism curdle into a wan tool of capitalism (lean in, girlboss!), the book is somehow very entertaining and even energizing, transforming a dismal history into something like a rallying cry.
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In “Strangers In the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America” (Doubleday) Michael Luo has written a sweeping history that somehow feels intimate, a narrative of irrational bigotry and legal violence that somehow shines with hope. In a moment of anti-immigrant fever, this work arrives like a balm.
Kate Tuttle edits the Globe’s Books section.
Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at kate.tuttle@gmail.com.
