Donna M. JohnsonRecensioni

Donna Johnson tells of a childhood on the move: from ever-moving football-field-size revival tents to "foster" homes to hideaways as the (never acknowledged) 2nd family of preacher David Terrell. She struggles between faith and disbelief, trust and suspicion. She witnesses no less than three healings (miracles) yet never has a personal touch from God. Preacher Terrell is kind and inspirational but never a full-time father. She endures what is close to physical and emotional abuse from several 'foster' mothers (while her real mother and Terrell are in Africa). She rebels, comes back, and then finally leaves the world of evangelists for good at college-age. The book is compelling, detailed and this reader, for one, felt Donna's pain at being pulled between the real world and the only one she knew. The book also tells a cautionary tale about believing too much and becoming paranoid and fearful of others outside the tent.

This was one of those books that I wasn't sure what I might get from the author. I've been reading a lot of memoirs lately and they're hit and miss for the most part. The celebrity memoirs are stories staggered and mish-mashed together. The memoirs of regular folks are even more hit or miss.

The Glass Castle was written so well. Not my favorite book because of the content, the voice of the author is so clearly defined. She's a true author, capturing scenes and moments with beautiful detail even when the scene was hard to read.

On the other hand the memoir Escape was not written by a "real" writer, but the woman who's story it is and a ghost writer. Overall, it's not so well told. There were no cleverly written descriptions; it was just the facts, ma'am.

I'm comparing these two novels to Holy Ghost Girl because Glass Castle is similar in it's experience of children growing up with nontraditional parents; and Escape because of it's relation to extreme religious beliefs.

I got lucky, Holy Ghost Girl was written with clarity and actual storytelling, something that Escape clearly did not have. We see, through the eyes of the child Donna Johnson, the confusing world of traveling tent revivalist. Town to town, giving over to the charisma of a man who believed he was Jesus. The pull to want to please and be "good" but also to fit in, doubting some of the things that went on under the tent.

Most of the book is young Donna, but we do get to see teenage Donna who struggles with her faith going back to the fold of Brother Terrell and then leaving.

It's a wonderfully written book about faith, doubt, revelation. It's not just a tale of scandal but how it was on the inside, but not so sober or tell-all as Escape, enough easy storytelling like Glass Castle.

This is a beautiful book if someone likes well written memoirs, interest in a look inside a religious order, and would like to read about the ups and downs of faith.

I found this fascinating in places and it certainly offered an interesting perspective on the "faith healer" phenomena. Were people really healed? How could they have been when the "prophet" was so flawed? Mostly I left this story with a lot of sadness for the people that this man hurt and a renewed conviction that people should not put their faith in other human beings but in God alone, He is the only one who will never disappoint us.

The author was just three years old when her mother signed on as the organist of tent revivalist David Terrell, and before long her family was part of the hugely popular evangelical preacher's inner circle. She often questioned the strange things that she observed, but the adults in her life always quashed her questions and encouraged her to trust in the anointing of Brother Terrell. As she grew older she became more and more aware of the illicit relationship between her mother and Brother Terrell, and she became resentful of the secretive lifestyle they were forced to adopt
Donna eventually left the Terrellites, despite the strain this placed upon her relationship with her mother and siblings. Eventually Terrell is imprisoned and Donna is able to come to terms with her past and find her own way to a path that seems right to her.

Highly recommend. Good book, great narrator - the author describes life as a child growing up in a super religious tent-revival church run by David Terrell - she's very even-handed in her descriptions of life, though personally I think she was too nice.

meh. it reminds me of my childhood in some ways and the opposite in others. I thought it would be moving but instead, it's just sad; sad that people treat their children poorly "in the Lord's name".

Donna Johnson's father left the family when she was very young. Donna, her mother Carolyn, and her little brother Gary join up with a tent revivalist, David Terrell, where Carolyn plays organ.

The children are placed in the care of Brother Terrell's wife, Betty Ann who has two children by Brother Terrell during the revivals and are rowdy and full of mischief. The story tells of growing up poor in the tents even sleeping on the chairs until wee hours of the night and traveling from town to town living in rented houses and eating scraps of food, sometimes fasting as well.

The revivals are full of exorcisms, healings, and speaking in tongues and at times, Brother Terrell has to fight off the KKK as the story is set during the civil rights movement mostly in Mississippi and Alabama.

As the evangelist grows larger and traveling is more intense Donna and Gary are sent off to live with whoever her momma can dump them on, sometimes abusive people. Eventually, the scandal of the affair breaks and Brother Terrell moves them into their own house where he makes regular visits and they even have more kids together but later on Carolyn finds out that Brother Terrell is having other affairs and has other "families".

In my opinion, the book was a little slow, but I kept at it as it is interesting and there is a surprise in the end but I'll leave that to you dear readers to find out for yourselves. I find it fascinating how Brother Terrell can heal people through the power of faith in the Lord and he does. He makes the blind to see and the crippled to walk right in front of thousands of people and people would come from near and far and line up to be healed. I don't know if it's true or not, but what Donna makes very clear is that the Lord speaks through him even though he is a sinner and cheater and a liar.

The book was published in 2011 by Gotham books.

Completely compelling story as the author grapples honestly with her "stranger than fiction" upbringing. A daughter of a traveling organist and writer for a traveling evangelist in the 60's whose movement took off, creating large communities world-wide. Witness to healing miracles (and her own spiritual infliction predicted by her "father," the evangelist/prophet/healer) and horrific moral and federal crimes: the author is left with questions I have been asking myself for years. One of my top two favorite memoirs of all time. Love that I started the new year with this book.

This book held my attention from page one despite the fact that it was a memoir and I usually don't really like reading those. Definitley recommend this book.

I generally don't like memoirs, but the premise for this one was intriguing. Although it took quite awhile to finish this, the story is well-written, highly descriptive, humorous at times, sad at others, and embarrassingly maddening a few times. Ms. Johnson has presented a life that few may be familiar with, but easy to imagine.½

i don't know. the reader was very good. the book was maybe too long. no one can remember that much about her childhood or perhaps want to. but it was an interesting story of wacky revival people--those who host and those who pay for them. texas is pretty scary.½

I was really looking forward to this book, but struggled finishing it. I think that this was more timing on my part than the author's writing. I found the look into the world or tent revivals and the people that follow it fascinating and intriguing.

I have to be honest - By the time I received this book from "Librarything Early Reviewers" I had changed my mind and wasn't really interested in reading it anymore. I started and stopped several times, putting it on the back burner. When I decided to do an all Bio and Memoir month I thought I would finally drag this book out and get it read - I am so glad I did! Boy was I missing out. This was a fantastic book. Even though it was a memoir it read very much like a novel. It just flowed, and I did not want to put it down!
This book was so interesting. It had just enough history - the big tent revivals of the 60's, the Ku Klux Klan, the deep south of the 60's, but also just enough story to keep it fun. Much of this book was kinda unbelievable. The book is suppose to be true and who am I to say? Maybe it is all the truth. She does say at one point that this is from her memory as a child, so maybe is was skewed. If it was all the truth - it is a pretty remarkable story! But the point is - I just didn't care! It was so good, I really didn't care if it was truth or fiction.
I loved Donna's style of writing, she tried to keep it humorous with witty lines - "Brother Terrell could scat on scripture like a Jazz singer hopped up on speed"
Get a behind the scenes look at what goes on with one family's life in the "Big Tent Revival" of the 60's in the south. If you are a Christian - believing in miracles, Or someone who just loves a little bit of southern history you will defiantly enjoy this book. I did not feel that this book makes fun of religion or Christianity at all. It is just one family's story. I am a Christian and I do believe in miracles so I know stuff like faith healing does happen!½

I can imagine several reasons why people might pick up this non-fiction account of the “daughter” of David Terrell, one of the most famous (some would say infamous) Pentecostal preachers of the 50s/60s. But I bet, when they’ve done reading, few will discover this to have been what they expected. This is not a passionate homage to the “tent preacher” tradition, now mostly passed into memory; but neither is it a vindictive expose of the corruptions and hypocrisies that have come to be associated with the tradition. Holy Ghost Girl is, instead, the unapologetically complex tale of a life indelibly marked by faith, cruelty, doubt, miracles, greed, and love.

Donna Johnson’s prose is stark, unemotional, and effecting as she recounts a childhood that was alternately remarkable (she regularly witnessed miracles of healing and faith) and horrific (she was also regularly abandoned by her mother, left in the care of “guardians” ranging from merely inept to deliberately cruel). The book traces her life from her earliest memories – of fidgeting in wood chairs, sticky with sweat, as “Brother Terrell” preached hellfire and salvation to the poor – through her years as a young woman, struggling to reconcile the part of her that loathes the growing hypocrisy of Terrellite movement with the part of her that associates the tradition with faith and love. Along the way, she finds ways to cope (demonstrating a resilience I found both astonishing and heartbreaking) with challenges to include a childhood almost entirely devoid of childish experiences; a nomadic existence featuring a succession of donated “homes”, each more bleak than the one before; a mother who consistently choose her religion over her children; racism and the Klan (tent revivals being one of the few places in the 50s/60s where whites and blacks came together as equals); scars both physical and psychological; and – most confusing of all – her relationship with David Terrell, the man who treated her as his own daughter and who regularly shared her mother’s bed … yet who required her to call him “Uncle Terrell” in public, and who never attempted to divorce the wife and mother of his other children.

As I suspect others will do, I approached this book with definite biases that I expected to be reinforced by the author’s story. But what I found instead was a story much more unsettling, much more morally complex, and much more moving than I expected.

It took me a long time to get in to this book about Donna Johnson, who was the young daughter of a woman who sold everything to follow evangelist and preacher David Terrell in the 1960s and 70s. Donna's mother had an affair with the married minister and secretly bore three of his children. On one hand, this is a fascinating look at the inside world of tent revivals, and how people want to believe in miracles so badly that they overlook all the warning signs that the minister just might be a con man. On the other hand, the author did witness some truly miraculous things that didn't appear to be staged or sleight of hand, but if you want definitive proof, you won't get it.

I found the book interesting but did not love it.

While the book was written well enough, it was hard for me to enjoy without a sense of morbid discomfort - the world of the Holy Rollers, full of performance and hypocrisy, is anathema to my own. All the same it was an interesting look into a unique and at times dysfunctional childhood. This book gave a feeling of the author's catharsis, and her continuing struggle between belief and rationality.

This book is the somewhat interesting memoir of a girl growing up on the tent revival circuit of the 1960s and 1970s. I grew up in that era, in the South, so the big tents of the Holy Roller and Pentacostal revivals are familar to me. Growing up in that charged atmosphere had to be weird, where so many people expect so much of the preacher - seeming to forget that, whatever his calling, he's still just a man. Many of those following these preachers could deny them nothing - thinking that if they (the preachers) wanted it, God must be laying that want on their heart (whether it was right or wrong). I expected this memoir to get into this aspect a little more.

The author followed the revival with her mother and brother from the age of 3 until she was 17. Her descriptions lack passion - it's almost as if she's reporting on events happening to someone else. While I didn't expect a "mile a minute" ride (let's face it - most people's lives are pretty boring, even in an odd circumstance) I would have liked a little more life in the storytelling.

It was an OK read, and some of the details about life in the tent and what happened behind the scenes are interesting, but overall, the book fell a little flat.½

This book is a fascinating account of the author's dysfunctional family life as a follower of the evangelist and faith healer David Terrell. Her story is well told, mostly through her eyes as a young child. It was an interesting and compelling book.

I never experienced the kind of religion described by Donna Johnson in Holy Ghost Girl, but I have long been curious about what really happens in some of those large tent revivals that one ran across so frequently in past decades (and in lesser numbers even today). How much money is actually used for the purposes for which it is donated? Are any of the healings unexplainable, or are they all preplanned fakes? What are these “men of God” like after hours, behind closed doors? Are they believers or performers? Donna Johnson, whose family became part of David Terrell’s traveling ministry when she was just three, is certainly in the position to answer these questions and, in Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir, she does answer many of them.

From Johnson’s earliest memory, her family was part of David Terrell’s inner circle. Her mother was Terrell’s organist, and with her mother and brother, she traveled from city to city in Terrell’s personal vehicle alongside his wife and two children. The families’ relationship was a close one, but it would be some time before Johnson was old enough to figure out just how close her mother and Terrell really were.

Johnson very effectively tells her story through the eyes of a child. What she reveals from one chapter to the next is largely how she perceived it while it was happening around her. She speaks both of the awe she felt at some of what she witnessed and the utter boredom that came with having to sit in a folding chair night after night (and during afternoon sessions) during the nearly week-long revivals that she experienced for several years. Johnson’s account of the ministry’s early days, days during which there was barely enough money for gasoline and fees to make it to the next city, is particularly affecting. But she also visits the other side of the coin, when the money was coming in so fast that Terrell could squander much of it on separate, hidden homes for the lovers (including her mother) he stashed around the country.

Telling this story through the eyes of a youngster, however, allows some questions to remain unanswered. There is little doubt that David Terrell did some good things. Particularly impressive was his willingness in the 1960s to physically stand up to the KKK thugs who threatened his life, and tried to shut him down, when he refused to close his ministry to blacks even while working in the deepest South. Less impressive is Johnson’s revelation about what Terrell and his inner circle really felt about blacks during that period – in their closed door, inner circle moments.

Frustratingly, no truths are revealed about the healing aspect of this type of ministry. Johnson describes many of the successes she witnessed without ever questioning their validity. Some of what she describes, if it really happened the way she recalls it, would certainly qualify as miraculous. My only disappointment with the book is that, considering how young its author was when she witnessed most of what she describes, I feel no closer to the truth about the healings than I was before I read her story.

But, too, I do not see how anyone could possibly resist a memoir whose prologue begins with a sentence as intriguing as this one left on Johnson’s answering machine: “Donna, I don’t know if you’re coming to the funeral, but I heard Daddy’s gonna try to raise Randall from the dead.”

Rated at: 4.0

There was a delay in receiving this book that I was really looking forward to reading. I was pleased when I received the book. It was well worth the wait.

Donna Johnson certainly had a very different childhood than I did. She did an excellent job of describing her life as she, her mother, and her siblings followed David Terrell, a tent preacher. Charismatic people such as Terrell can be confusing for those around them. I expected to read an expose of the false theatrics of the miracle healings by Terrell. Johnson does not describe faked healings, but she does discuss some of the people that were never healed such as Terrell's son. The author acknowledges the hipocrisy of Terrell's life and her mother's loyalty to Terrell, but she was also describes witnessing some seemingly miraculous healings.

This is an amazing true story of a girl raised by a single mother. Only this single mother has joined and follows around the south, an over the top religiospus group. The group is lead by a charismatic , philandering zealot, who has vision and speaks in tongues. This is a must read if you have any interest in the social history of the south.

Donna Johnson's memoir Holy Ghost Girl is an engrossing account of her life growing up on the Pentecostal evangelist circuit. Her story is gripping as she recounts how her family becomes entwwined with the family of chrismatic evangelist preacher Brother Terrell and the life they lead on the road. At times Ms. Johnson's story is heartwrenching as she describes being abused by a follower of Brother Terrell and the frequent abscences of her mother who has her own issues to deal with.Ms. Johnson's story is about survival and learning to adjust in a world that is both fascinating and frightening.

Author: Donna M. Johnson
Title: Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir
Description: A single mother with two small children, Donna Johnson’s mother still felt a call to the ministry which prompted her to leave her Assemblies of God clergy parents’ home to join the entourage of revivalist David Terrell. A tent-preacher in the faith-healing tradition of Oral Roberts, Terrell and his small group of followers traveled from town to town, mostly in the civil rights era South, holding revival meetings. From the time she was a toddler, Johnson grew up attending several preaching services a day, witnessing healings and speaking in tongues as everyday events, and associating only with other holiness converts.
ARC source: I received this book as a part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.
Writing style: Previous books that I’ve read in this genre tend to be pretty tongue-in-cheek, demonstrating that the author now knows better than to believe all that claptrap. And you have to admit that this type of lifestyle, while not generally prone to drunkenness and high living, has its own extremes. I was surprised at Johnson’s even-handed approach. While she does not cover up the flaws of the adults involved (Terrell was sexually involved with several women in the group in addition to his wife and Johnson’s mother seemed to have many priorities higher than parenthood), she also readily affirms the good memories and the seemingly miraculous events that surround Terrell.
Audience: This book will appeal to those who enjoy reading memoirs and those interested in revivalism and religious history.
Major ideas: Although Johnson felt like her family was mostly broken, as an adult she comes to realize that perhaps she can define “family” in a way that will include the jumble of people who surround David Terrell. She also seems surprised that she has managed to become as normal of an adult as she seems to be.
Wrap-up: I had a not dissimilar upbringing, so maybe I was way more fascinated by this book than other folks would be, but it still struck me as being gracefully written, evenly paced, and always fascinating. 4.5/5*

"Holy Ghost Girl" is a candid, entertaining memoir which orbits the strange world of travelling tent revivals; a way of spreading the word that was dying out even as the author experienced it. Although author Donna Johnson could've dramatized this memoir quite a bit (a' la James Frey), she didn't. Instead she lets the subtle comedies and tragedies of revival life accumulate, so that at the end of the book, the reader is left with as many questions as answers. Many of these questions revolve around the glowing core of the author's childhood experience - preacher David Terrell. As a faith-healer, is he the real deal? Could he actually bring sight to the blind, mobility to the lame, or are these just elaborate stage tricks easily swallowed by a brainwashed little girl? I find it hard to empathize with Terrell, a hypocrite of biblical proportions. He rails against females who dare to wear makeup and pants, but has affairs with multiple women from his following, fathering hordes of confused children out of wedlock. However, Johnson doesn't depict Terrell as a villain; only a conflicted fanatic, who even in the depths of hypocrisy is capable of frequent acts of kindness.

The author does not make the focus of this memoir her personal life outside the tent; instead she shows us how tent life shaped her as an impressionable young girl and eventually, a less-impressionable woman. However, I found myself wanting in on that personal life; I wish Johnson shared a little more of that experience. For instance, how did she go from being a near-puritanical holy roller to a pot smoking, pants-wearing free spirit? That transition is never breached, but it seems like it would've made for great material. This small criticism aside, the writing in this book is quite good. Already, Johnson seems to be a master of metaphor.

* Favorite line of the book (referring to Randall, the preacher Terrell's son): "Away from the tent, he was nobody, and if there was one thing Randall couldn't stand, it was being a nobody. Pam and I knew this about him. We knew it in the way kids sniff out tender areas of one another's psyches, little gardens of feeling to be skirted or trampled upon, depending on the day and the situation" (p. 74).

Like the author of Holy Ghost Girl, Donna Johnson, I too grew up in the church. My experience, however, was quite different than the Tent Revival Circuit described in her book. I grew up as a Methodist. I didn't know that it was "allowed" to do anything with your hands during a church service other than keep them folded quietly in your lap or color on the bulletin if you were really lucky. I didn't know that you could sing songs that weren't printed in the hymnal, sung by the church choir, or accompanied by anything other than a piano or organ. I didn't know that a pastor could speak above a barely audible drone.

I had a bit of a rude awakening when I was a teenager and realized that other people did church differently. I went on a mission trip with an organization that turned out to be much more "charismatic" in nature than I'd been prepared for. It was on this trip that I experienced things that Donna Johnson might find all too familiar. This was the first time that I'd been surrounded by hundreds of people speaking in tongues (Johnson's onomatopoeia is dead on), the first time I'd seen faith healing, the first time I saw people attempting to walk on water like Jesus did. This was all pretty terrifying for a good little Methodist girl from the Midwest.

Therefore, I can imagine Johnson's surprise at discovering that there was a world outside her religious culture, just as I was surprised to discover that her religious culture existed. I can empathize with her confusion and simultaneous belief and distrust. In all, I think this was a very well written and engaging book and certainly refreshed my memories of similar experience even though mine were years later and in different circumstances. Those outside of this religious tradition might question what part of Johnson's memoir is reality and what is simply based on unreliable childhood memories. I can say that she's done an excellent job of meshing her memories with things that still go on today.