Book Review: ‘Holy Ghost Girl’ by Donna Johnson

Book: Holy Ghost Girl by Donna Johnson
Reviewed by: Mandy

Any story about growing up in the American south during the 1960s strikes my fancy – but this story done struck my fancy with lightning. Holy Ghost Girl is Donna Johnson’s memoir about growing up in a tent revival circuit under the direction of the evangelical preacher and old-fashioned lech, David Terrell.

Donna’s mother, Carolyn, the revival’s organist, is a fascinating character whose relationship with God waxed & waned over the years – she was a musical prodigy; able to play the piano beautifully upon striking the keys for the very first time. And when she was 15, she had a vision of playing an accordion. She fasted and prayed for days when inexplicably a neighbor brings her father money in the middle of the night so she could buy an accordion after days of not being able to sleep, thinking about the compulsion to do so. The whole book is speckled with these casually mentioned but reverently remembered types of miracles – it is these miracles that make the book seem supernatural, or as we like to say at BookPeople, “woo-ey”.

Carolyn moved to Los Angeles when she was eighteen, much to the dismay of her Pentecostal parents. She met a boy, fell in love, became pregnant, got married – “a trigger-happy God pointing the gun” at this shotgun wedding. After two years of marriage and two children, Donna’s father decided to leave. This forced the prodigal daughter to return to her parents’ home in Alabama feeling completely disgraced and deciding to turn her life around, thus leading her towards the dulcet & deceitful words of Brother David Terrell.

David Terrell was tall, dark, handsome, and could preach with the sway and allure of a great magician. The tent revival system provided Donna and her brother Gary with an extended family – the children of Brother Terrell and his wife.  This motley crew of four children bickered, tattled, loved, annoyed, defended one another and grew up witnessing miracles (blind men being healed, crippled children suddenly walking, deaf women suddenly hearing, giant tumors disappearing from people’s bodies in front of huge crowds, all after the healing touch of Brother Terrell) and exorcisms. Donna’s writing is so trustworthy that you can only believe that when she describes seeing demons being released from a sinning woman’s body, she did actually see that happen and so did 1,000 other “Terrelites”.

Terrell asked his faithful folks, poor folks, for the last scrap of change in their pockets, which he used to provide a house in Texas for Carolyn, Donna, Gary, and a new baby sister, as well as many luxury vehicles, a state of the art TV set (which until they could afford it was considered a BIG sin), and a guitar-shaped swimming pool. While living in Texas and in secret, Carolyn bore twin girls. At this point in the book, Brother Terrell is more bad than good. Little did Carolyn know, he was also impregnating and carrying on with other women from the church; in addition to his actual wife. As soon as Donna could, she married and moved away – away from her family and away from the speaking-in-tongues-craziness that had defined her young life.

It isn’t until many years later when Donna goes back for Randall’s funeral that she revisits the tent revival world that formed the foundations of her life and her faith. Even though she has a right to despise Brother Terrell (who oddly was able to save so many people but could never heal his desperately ill son), she cannot quite shake his impact on her life and on all of his followers – “my recollections have distilled into mythology of faith, hard to believe, harder still to deny”.

Once you start the book, it is impossible to put down. It’s like a diary that reads like a fable. Truly fascinating and gripping from beginning to end. I very much look forward to meeting Donna and hearing her talk when she’s here at the store next Wednesday, October 26, 7p.