Sister Aimee, Daniel Mark Epstein
Sister Aimee, Daniel Mark Epstein
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Sister Aimee
The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson

Author: Daniel Mark Epstein

Narrator: Tom Parks

Unabridged: 16 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/14/2020


Synopsis

The true story of America's first superstar evangelist that "fills a significant gap in the history of revivalism" (The New York Times Book Review).

Once she answered the divine calling, Aimee Semple McPherson rose fast from unfulfilled housewife in Rhode Island to "miracle woman"—the most enigmatic, pioneering, media-savvy Christian evangelist in the country. She preached up and down the United States, traveling in a 1912 Packard with her mother and her children—and without a man to fix flat tires. Her ministry was rolled out in tents, concert halls, boxing rings, and speakeasies. She prayed for the healing of hundreds of thousands of people, founded the Foursquare Church, and built a Pentecostal temple in Los Angeles of Hollywood-epic dimensions (Charlie Chaplin advised her on sets). But this is not just a story of McPherson's cult of fame. It's also the story about its price: exhaustion, insomnia, nervous breakdowns, sexual scandals, loneliness, and the notorious public disgrace that nearly destroyed her.

About Daniel Mark Epstein

Daniel Mark Epstein is the author of biographies of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as nine volumes of poetry. His verse has appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review, among other publications. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Epstein the Rome Prize in 1977 and an Arts and Letters Award in 2006. He lives in Baltimore.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Eric_W

Nice girls in 1908 did not smoke cigarettes or go to cockfights or seek baptism in the Holy Spirit. As a stimulant it might lead to conduct unbecoming a lady." Like speaking in tongues. Or falling madly in love with the latest Pentecostal. That's what happened to Aimee Kennedy, later to become famou......more

Goodreads review by Robert

This is simply the best general biography of Sister Aimee. Edith Blumhoffer's book is excellent, but Epstein writes not as a fellow religionist, but as an appreciative outsider. It's simply a joy to read this life of one of America's most intriguing religious leaders!......more

Goodreads review by Steve

It's amazing what a difference a century can make. Aimee Semple McPherson was a major star in the public eye of the 1920s and today she's nearly forgotten. Each year I enter Modern Mrs. Darcy's reading challenge in order to vary my literary diet. This year one of the categories is a biography, and s......more

Goodreads review by Fred

I'm not a particularly religious person despite my grandfathers both being ministers - Baptist and Episcopal and Mom converting the family to Catholicism when I was a kid. I tend to prefer things that are provable, scientific and less constructed of suspicion and myth. Still, as Thomas Jefferson sai......more