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What particularly stands out is Sutton's treatment of gender issues. His sympathetic portrayal of Aimee is not reserved for the Pentecostal evangelist but also extends to Aimee the lonely, depressed single mom. He contextualizes her sexuality both within the genteel evangelical circles of the day and the very different culture of the Hollywood beauty machine. The sexualizing of Aimee's every move, her clothing, her sermons, her ministry in general, tells us much about how evangelical women are drawn into a seemingly endless struggle, in which representations of virtuous Christian womanhood seem to be irreconcilable with everyday humanity. There are no more deeply felt passages in Sutton's book than those in which he considers the hidden loneliness that Aimee feared sharing with anyone. How could Aimee display the human need for physical intimacy if she had to maintain the mantle of purity that is the burden of all Pentecostal women? Sutton's account of Aimee's search for companionship and the debilitating toll her "kidnapping" took on her mentally as well as physically (in 1926, she disappeared for 36 days, then concocted a bizarre tale of kidnapping that led to a lengthy trial, the equivalent in its day of the O. J. Simpson trial) is the most persuasive portrayal of this episode to date; it also sheds light on the continuing struggles of Pentecostal women called to ministry in a man's world.
Another strength of Sutton's book is his exhaustive work on the political nature of Aimee's ministry and how, not simply as a forerunner of television preachers but also of the Christian Right, Aimee was a political player, consumed by the desire to right the American ship of state back to an ideal Christian past. Detailing her alliances with everyone from William Jennings Bryan to local Los Angeles politicos, Sutton sharpens the picture for us: Aimee was an evangelist, yes, but one who hoped to reshape American politics along fundamentalist lines. This political side of Aimee would also be seen in her attempts to refurbish her public image, which took a beating in the aftermath of the kidnapping story.
If Sutton's book has a weakness, it would be his treatment of Aimee's relations with racial and ethnic minorities. He is to be applauded for excavating the KKK connection—Aimee sometimes condemned the Klan but other times "asked for and received its support"—but his treatment of race in relation to Aimee's rather large following in the Mexican community, for example, isn't comparably nuanced. Sutton does well in noting that when she needed an expedient excuse for her kidnapping story, Aimee reverted to racist stereotypes, going so far as to chastise the media for accepting the word of a "Mexican" over hers. Aimee, like so many early white Pentecostal leaders, preached racial inclusion—and in her case, practiced it—but it would be wrong to suggest that racial inclusion in any way meant racial equality. While many Mexicans took shelter at Angelus Temple during the Great Depression and were fed and clothed by her ministry, there were many more who, for political expediency, were carted off to be repatriated to Mexico (whether they were American citizens or not). Aimee was silent on this issue. Sutton leaves us with the picture of Aimee vacillating: wanting to be integrationist, wanting be color blind, and yet, in reality, not being able to be much of either. This is true as far it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Readers would have been better served if Sutton had directly engaged the ongoing debate among Pentecostal historians, many of whom view the early years of Pentecostalism as a "golden age" of race relations, whereas many others among us view such claims as overstated at best, and baseless at worst.
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