A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2025

A Must-Read: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Millions, Alta

"Gripping . . . Wonderfully thorough, the type of biography in which you learn just the right amount about everything . . . Magnificent." -Casey Cep, The New Yorker

Sister, Sinner chronicles 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 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.