Harrison Hill is the author of The Oracle’s Daughter, coming April 7, 2026 from Scribner.
“A STAGGERING ACHIEVEMENT”
–Leslie Jamison
Harrison Hill grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He received his MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University, where he also taught undergraduate writing. His journalism and essays have appeared in The Cut, GQ, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, AFAR, The Guardian, and The Threepenny Review. The Oracle’s Daughter is his first book.
The Oracle’s Daughter
The Rise and Fall of An American Cult
The shocking true story of the rise and fall of a woman-led cult—a debut work of narrative nonfiction about extremism, the search for belonging, and 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 in 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 hippie movement, through the conspiracy-theorist 1990s and into the present day. 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 beliefs and practices, including exorcism, kidnapping, prohibitions against the “abominations” of popular music and psychoanalysis, and the horrific mistreatment of those who fell out of the leaders’ favor.
Though ACMTC was radical in its beliefs, deprivations, and abuses, its history is a window into the particular character of American fanaticism, and an examination of the porous boundary between the fringe and the mainstream. With a propulsive, deeply researched narrative, The Oracle’s Daughter illuminates the strange twists and turns of the country’s religious development—and how much more vulnerable we are to extremism than we might like to think.
“A staggering achievement, synthesizing rigorous reportage, incisive cultural analysis, and a deeply compassionate gaze into a propulsive and unforgettable narrative.
Its gaze is both intimate and expansive: attuned to the texture of individual lives even as it surveys the broad, unsettling sweep of American freedom. With nuance and integrity, Harrison Hill takes a story many people would feel more comfortable banishing to the fringe and instead asks us to see the ways it illuminates all of America. All the way through, The Oracle’s Daughter is as gripping as it is humane; I picked it up and barely put it down until I’d finished. I'll carry this story with me always.”
–Leslie Jamison, New York Times–bestselling author of Splinters and The Empathy Exams
“A propulsive reckoning with a mother, her daughter, and the extremism woven through the story of American religion.
Beautifully told, un-put-downable, and urgently necessary, Hill offers a novelesque account of a cult that pushes beyond familiar narratives, asking us to consider just how far we truly are from the most radical edges of American life.”
— Heather Radke, author of Butts: A Backstory
COMING APRIL 7, 2026
Other Writing
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On Escaping a Cult // The Cut, New York Magazine
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On Venice and Jan Morris // AFAR
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On the Death of a Theater // The Brooklyn Rail
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On Harvey Fierstein // GQ
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On Virginia’s 5th District // The Guardian
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On Hiking // Travel + Leisure
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On the American Chestnut // The American Scholar
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On Pete Buttigieg // The Los Angeles Review of Books
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On Urban Lighting // The Threepenny Review
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On Homeschooling in Montana // Chicago Quarterly Review
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On Growing Up // Gay Mag
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On “Midnight Cowboy” // GQ
More:
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On politics and dating, in GEN
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On the “pocket forest” movement, in AFAR
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On Thailand, in AFAR
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On Spanish novelist Virginia Feito, in Vogue
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On indoor composting, in Orion
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On Broadway and Covid-19, in The American Scholar
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On Broadway in the 1990s, in the Los Angeles Review of Books
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On climate literature, in The Rumpus
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On Angels in America, in the Los Angeles Review of Books