The Oracle's Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult

A gripping chronicle of the rise and fall of a woman-led cult—and the enduring allure of extremism across America's turbulent religious history. 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...