WOMAN OF THE ROCK

Not without a certain curious fascination, and handled sympathetically rather than satirically, this story of Mother Church, whose evangelical success was unequalled in her time and is presumably reminiscent of Aimee Sample MacPherson. Butte, Montanaborn, Ruth Church had her first experience with the theatricalism of cultism under an uncle and aunt in California, later with real religion when she married a minister. At his death, she took over his parish, gained her reputation, eventually went to Los Angeles- the ""real religious Big Time""- where, with a Mrs. Libby as impressario, her following assumed vast proportions, her Temple profitted. In the years that followed, there was her rebellion against the tyranny of Mrs. Libby which permitted no privacy, no privilege of her sex; the frustration of two love affairs; the resultant scandal, litigation, and eventual abandonment of her Temple, her public...The fabulous rather than fraudulent aspects of a career such as this, the privations it imposed, in a readable rendition.