Listen free for 30 days

Preview

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Holy Ghost Girl

Written by: Donna M. Johnson
Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $30.53

Buy Now for $30.53

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

A compassionate, humorous story of faith, betrayal, and coming of age on the sawdust trail.

She was just three years old when her mother signed on as the organist of tent revivalist David Terrell, and before long, Donna Johnson was part of the hugely popular evangelical preacher’s inner circle. At seventeen, she left the ministry for good, with a trove of stranger-than-fiction memories. A homecoming like no other, Holy Ghost Girl brings to life miracles, exorcisms, and faceoffs with the Ku Klux Klan - and that’s just what went on under the tent.

As Terrell became known worldwide during the 1960s and ’70s, the caravan of brokendown cars and trucks that made up his ministry evolved into fleets of Mercedes and airplanes. The glories of the Word mixed with betrayals of the flesh, and Donna’s mother bore Terrell’s children in one of several secret households he maintained. Thousands of followers, dubbed “Terrellites” by the press, left their homes to await the end of the world in cultlike communities. Jesus didn’t show, but the IRS did, and the prophet-healer went to prison.

Recounted with deadpan observations and surreal detail, Holy Ghost Girl bypasses easy judgment to articulate a rich world where the mystery of faith and human frailty share a surprising and humorous coexistence.

Donna Johnson has written about religion for the Dallas Morning News and the Austin American Statesman. She won the Mayborn Creative Nonfiction Prize for Manuscript in Progress in 2007 for Holy Ghost Girl.

©2011 Donna Johnson (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What the critics say

“What a life!…Donna Johnson sorts through her story with great insight, compassion, and humor.” (Jeannette Walls, New York Times best-selling author of The Glass Castle)

What listeners say about Holy Ghost Girl

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.