June 6, 2011
Johnson spent her childhood in the 1960s and 1970s traveling the America's South with revivalist preacher Brother David Terrell, a hugely popular Holy Roller who brought thousands to his raucous tent sermons. But life under the tentâand under Terrell's controlâwas far from easy, and Johnson eloquently recounts this uncommon upbringing shaped by constant upheaval and her increasingly fraught conception of faith. Johnson's mother, Carolyn, the daughter of a pastor, joined Brother Terrell's circuit as an organist after a failed marriage, when Johnson was three. Brother Terrell, a Pentecostal "sawdust-trail preacher" in the tradition of Oral Roberts, struggled to find his footing on the evangelical circuit until an instance of alleged faith healing made him an overnight sensation; his tent crowds soon numbered in the thousands. Yet despite his success among those speaking in tongues during his sermons, day-to-day life for the Terrell familyâincluding his wife, Betty Ann; son Randall; and daughter Pamâand those in the inner circle remained difficult, as bills went unpaid and food was scarce. As she gets older, Johnson realizes that Brother Terrell's life is anything but sinless: he fathers numerous children with other women (including three with Johnson's mother) and is later arrested for tax evasion. Leaving the tent circuit for good at 16 gave Johnson the perspective she needed for this fascinating tale of life with a "con man, a prophet, a performer."
October 15, 2011
Growing up on the revivalist sawdust trail in the 1960s. Johnson was three when her mother, after a lapse in faith that left her divorced and pregnant, joined tent preacher Brother David Terrell's evangelical team as the organist. Much of this debut memoir is about the author's discovering and dealing with her mother's status--and shame--as Terrell's mistress. This chronicle of a world filled with love and sin, boredom and adventure and faith and questioning also serves as a portrait of a complex and charismatic man. Terrell was the last of the great Holy Roller preacher-healers, and his eventual fall from grace coincided with Johnson's own emancipation from the only reality she knew. Throughout her childhood, the author observed healings, exorcisms, people babbling in tongues and threats from the KKK. "The events I witnessed and the stories about these events have intertwined to form a single thread of memory," writes the author. "Sifted and shaped over time by the adults around me, my recollections have distilled into a mythology of faith, hard to believe, harder still to deny." By telling her story from a child's perspective, Johnson captures both the confusion and clarity that come with preadolescent recollection. She avoids intellectualizing and judgment through a disciplined honesty about her own struggle with faith. After living with a series of sometimes-affectionate, sometimes-abusive caretakers while her mother traveled with Terrell, Johnson saw the once-poor ministry grow into a lucrative operation. Terrell fathered three daughters with the author's mother, adding to his network of illegitimate children who traveled blindfolded to visit him on his secret properties before he was taken to prison for tax evasion. A trustworthy narrator, Johnson is consistently funny, poetic and remarkably devoid of bitterness.
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