Sister, Sinner

Coming April 22

Sister, Sinner

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?

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“Painting the evangelist as part grifter, part troubled soul, Hoffman illuminatingly pinpoints how McPherson 'prefigures' today’s influencer-dominated world, where 'pop culture language' can blend with 'ideas about the divine' to manufacture new truths. It’s a revelatory study of how power, religion, and fame intersect.”

Publishers Weekly

“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: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church

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 brilliant character-study.”

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Box: Writing the Race

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: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

“Pioneering evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson had moved multitudes by the time women won the right to vote. But her improbable life includes a mystery at its core. And Claire Hoffman has accessed new sources to uncover a story in which megachurch meets film noir.”

Cynthia Carr, author of Candy Darling

“A well-researched portrait of an outsize personality.”

Kirkus Review

“This biography of the fascinating Aimee Semple McPherson, America’s most famous evangelist, takes religion, fame, and power as its subjects alongside McPherson, whose life was suffused with mystery and scandal.”

The Millions, Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2025

SAINTLY SISTER, OR SINNER?

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 asked: 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.

OUT APRIL 22, 2025 • PRE-ORDER NOW

About the Author

Photo of Claire Hoffman
Photo by Davis Guggenheim

Claire Hoffman works as a journalist and author, reporting 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 is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, and has a masters degree in religion from the University of Chicago, a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University and an MFA from NYU. She serves on the board of her family foundation, the Goldhirsh Foundation, as well as the Columbia Journalism School and ProPublica.

Her first book, a memoir, Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood, was published in 2016 by Harper Collins. She is at work on a historical biography of Aimee Semple McPherson which is forthcoming from FSG in 2025. She lives in California with her family.