Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson - Paperback

by Daniel Mark Epstein (Author)

Sister Aimee was a scamp in school, a young widow in China, and a neurotic housewife in Rhode Island, but when the Lord spoke to her, she accepted her ministry and began preaching. This book "fills a significant gap in the history of revivalism" (New York Times Book Review). Photographs.

Back Jacket

In Wichita she held up her hand to stop the rain. Aimee Semple McPherson was consecrated to God, before she was born, by her mother, a soldier of the Salvation Army. She was a scamp in school, a young widow in China, and a neurotic housewife in Rhode Island. But when the Lord spoke to her as she was at death's door, she accepted her ministry. She preached up and down the United States, traveling in a 1912 Packard with her mother and her children, without a man to fix tires. She preached in tents, concert halls, boxing rings, and speakeasies, prayed for the healing of hundreds of thousands of people, founded a Church, built a Pentecostal temple of Hollywood dimensions in Los Angeles (Charlie Chaplin advised her on sets, Anthony Quinn played saxophone in the pit), and she became, in the 1920s and 1930s, such a celebrity that the press publicly thanked her for having given work to so many journalists. Sister Aimee is the story of a unique woman; of the power of passion that rejects compromise and a faith that will not be shaken. But it is also the story of the price of fame. Exhaustion, insomnia, nervous breakdowns, sexual scandals, lawsuits, and ultimately loneliness.