The oracle's daughter the rise and fall of an American cult

"On a cool fall night in 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green crept out of her house, retrieved a backpack from its hiding place, and ran for her life. She was escaping not just the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, a paramilitary religious cult operating out of the New Mexico desert...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hill, Harrison (Journalist) (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, 2026.
Edition:First Scribner hardcover edition.
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Summary:"On a cool fall night in 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green crept out of her house, retrieved a backpack from its hiding place, and ran for her life. She was escaping not just the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, a paramilitary religious cult operating out of the New Mexico desert, but also the punishments and cruelty of the cult's leader - her mother, Deborah. In The Oracle's Daughter, Harrison Hill traces the fascinating beginnings and violent end of ACMTC, from its early days as an outgrowth of the 1960s counterculture to its descent into conspiracy-fueled abuse. This is the story of three women - Deborah, the group's founder and self-proclaimed oracle; Maura, one of its first members; and Sarah, Deborah's daughter - bound together by a punitive, baroque set of radical beliefs and practices, including exorcism, kidnapping, and the horrific mistreatment of those who fell out of the leaders' favor. With a dramatic, deeply researched narrative tracing the strange twists and turns of the country's religious development, The Oracle's Daughter illuminates the porous boundary between the fringe and the mainstream - and shows how much more vulnerable we are to extremism than we might like to think" --
Physical Description:331 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-320) and index.
ISBN:166801887X
9781668018873
Author Notes:Harrison Hill grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He received his MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University, where he also taught undergraduate writing. His journalism and essays have appeared in The Cut , GQ , Vogue , Travel + Leisure , AFAR , The Guardian , and other outlets . The Oracle's Daughter is his first book. Follow him @1harrisonhill.