Excellent ... Powerful ... Sensitively rendered ... This is exactly the kind of story that the true-crime industrial complex lives to hyperventilate over. But Hill is an extremely skilled writer, and his conscientious, measured reporting is a gift. He’s also a reliable guide who’s managed to create stunningly vivid scenes from the memories with which his subjects have trusted him.
The twists and turns Hill follows throughout this true story are extraordinary, and the author does a wonderful job of contextualizing the painful, sometimes horrifying choices his subjects made – especially those involving women leaving their children, which, as he points out, would be perceived very differently if these women had been men ... The Oracle's Daughter is a story about the terror of losing the self but it's also, gratifyingly, a story about finding the way back to it.
The story is ugly, and Hill is unsparing in his reportage. But more, he offers thoughtful notes on how cults work ... A compelling study of the meeting of religious zealotry with the cult of personality.
A hair-raising chronicle ... After painting a vivid portrait of the ACMTC’s operations, Hill details its slow collapse ... Drawing on firsthand accounts and the history of fundamentalism, this rigorous study of religious abuse isn’t easy to shake. Readers will be haunted.
