{"product_id":"the-oracles-daughter-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-american-cult","title":"The Oracle's Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHarrison 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 \n\u003ci\u003eThe Cut\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003e GQ\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003e Travel + Leisure\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eAFAR\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, and other outlets \n\u003ci\u003e. The Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is his first book. Follow him @1harrisonhill.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eTown \u0026amp; Country \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eAlta\u003c\/i\u003e's Best Books of April\u003cbr\u003e One of Oprah Daily's Best Books of Spring\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Terrifying, gripping, all true. I couldn't put it down.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Stephen King\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Excellent ... told with rare sensitivity ... 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 immediacy with which Hill portrays their conflicted longings gives the book the propulsive feel of a novel.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e--New York Times Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"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 ... \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is a story about the terror of losing the self but it's also, gratifyingly, a story about finding the way back to it.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--NPR\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"This true crime cult story opens with a scene straight from an action movie ... \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter \u003c\/i\u003ereads like immersive, on-the-ground reportage, charting how a small, idealistic community corrodes into a regime of cruelty, its practices so outlandish they'd feel invented if Hill didn't render them with such concrete, lived-in specificity ... You come for the propulsive mother-daughter nightmare and the granular portrait of a survival in a closed world; you leave with a bracing sense of how mainstream the fringe can get.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Oprah Daily, Best Books of Spring\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"An incredible new book that cast some sort of inexplicable spell over me demanding I follow its read-me now orders.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--CrimeReads \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Hill uses the story of this one isolated group to tell a much larger history, showing how the desires that drive cults to choose one's own spiritual destiny, to follow a charismatic leader rather than the established order, to cross into new territory and begin a new order, are the same forces that shaped the nation's origin story. Hill draws a clean line from founding era separatist heat through Mormonism, Shaker mysticism, Hippieism, and inevitably, Trumpism.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--NPR Weekly Reader\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"With dogged research and rare access to victims and their stories, Harrison Hill has created a riveting portrait of one of the strangest American cults in recent memory. \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter \u003c\/i\u003etakes the reader deep inside the female-led AMCTC, describing in harrowing detail the exorcisms and bizarre rituals while also laying bare the psychological and physical abuses inflicted by the cult's autocratic leaders. With a cast of unforgettable characters--including courageous former cult members who broke free--the book offers compelling insights into the makings of religious cults and why their allure is increasing in our hyper-polarized, grievance-infused age.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Joby Warrick, author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Flags: The Rise of ISIS\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction \u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Harrison Hill's \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter \u003c\/i\u003eis a staggering achievement, synthesizing rigorous reportage, incisive cultural analysis, and a deeply compassionate gaze into a propulsive and unforgettable narrative. Its gaze is both intimate and expansive: attuned to the texture of individual lives even as it surveys the broad, unsettling sweep of American freedom. With nuance and integrity, Hill takes a story many people would feel more comfortable banishing to the fringe and instead asks us to see the ways it illuminates all of America. All the way through, \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is as gripping as it is humane; I picked it up and barely put it down until I'd finished. I'll carry this story with me always.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Leslie Jamison, author of \u003ci\u003eSplinters: Another Kind of Love Story\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"From the opening scene of a young woman's midnight escape from a religious cult run by her mother -- that's right, mom's the messianic leader -- unfolds a decades-long saga that reveals an America of both darkness and light. Troubling, uplifting, heartbreaking, unforgettable -- tapping into seminal issues of our increasingly divided nation -- Harrison Hill has written a masterwork of narrative nonfiction. A must-read.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Hope in the Unseen and Life, Animated\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Harrison Hill's \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e does far more than delineate in vivid detail the alarming story of the Aggressive Christianity Mission Training Corps, surely one of the most frightening cults in modern religious history. Hill also provides essential cultural context, focusing not only on what happened involving that quasi-military group but also on how and why such a group can emerge. Anyone trying to understand religious cults should consider \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter \u003c\/i\u003erequired reading--it's that comprehensive and excellently written besides.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Jeff Guinn, author of \u003ci\u003eManson\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Road to Jonestown\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWaco\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \" \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is a propulsive reckoning with a mother, her daughter, and the extremism woven through the story of American religion. Beautifully told, un-put-downable, and urgently necessary, Hill offers a novelesque account of a cult that pushes beyond familiar narratives, asking us to consider just how far we truly are from the most radical edges of American life.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Heather Radke, author of \u003ci\u003eButts: A Backstory\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A hair-raising chronicle ... drawing on firsthand accounts and the history of fundamentalism, this rigorous study of religious abuse isn't easy to shake. Readers will be haunted.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e--Publishers Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"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.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"An unsettling tale of a uniquely extremist American religious movement ... A chilling American \"city upon a hill\" narrative turned in on itself.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"A deeply compelling experience... This thoughtful and absorbing work will appeal to readers drawn to explorations of religious extremism, such as \n\u003ci\u003e Under the Banner of Heaven (2003) \u003c\/i\u003eby Jon Krakauer \n\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand \n\u003ci\u003eBreaking Free (2017)\u003c\/i\u003e by Rachel Jeffs. \n\u003ci\u003e\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e--Booklist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\"Terrifying, gripping, all true. I couldn't put it down.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e--\u003c\/i\u003eStephen King\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Excellent...told with rare sensitivity...Hill is an extremely skilled writer, and his conscientious, measured reporting is a gift...The immediacy with which Hill portrays [his subjects'] conflicted longings gives the book the propulsive feel of a novel.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e--The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cb\u003eA \"deeply compelling\" (\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e) chronicle of the rise and fall of a woman-led cult--and the enduring allure of extremism across America's turbulent religious history.\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOn 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 based in the New Mexico desert, but also the cruelty of the cult's leader--her mother, Deborah. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In this \"incredible new book\" ( \n\u003ci\u003eCrimeReads\u003c\/i\u003e), Harrison Hill traces the \"extraordinary\" twists and turns (NPR) of the group's development, from its early days as an outgrowth of the 1960s counterculture, through its descent into conspiracy-fueled abuse, to the explosive trial that would lead to its downfall. \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Though ACMTC was radical in its beliefs and deprivations, its history provides a window into the broader sweep of American faith. \n\u003ci\u003eThe Oracle's Daughter \u003c\/i\u003ealso explores the fascinating world of cults--and gives \"a bracing sense of how mainstream the fringe can get\" ( \n\u003ci\u003eOprah Daily\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/span\u003e 02\/09\/2026 (EAN 9781668018873, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e 02\/15\/2026 (EAN 9781668018873, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/span\u003e 03\/13\/2026 pg. 1 (EAN 9781668018873, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eContributor Bio:\u003c\/strong\u003eHill, Harrison\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHarrison 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 \n\u003ci\u003eThe Cut\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003e GQ\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003e Travel + Leisure\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eAFAR\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, and other outlets \n\u003ci\u003e. The Oracle's Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is his first book. Follow him @1harrisonhill.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Scribner Book Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496035221782,"sku":"9781668018873","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9781668018873.jpg?v=1783051293","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/the-oracles-daughter-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-american-cult","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}