Trace the Rise and Fall of an American Cult in The Oracle's Daughter — See the Cover!

Harrison Hill's nonfiction debut, arriving in April 2026, follows the story of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps

People/June 27, 2025

By Brenton Blanchet

Harrison Hill was "gobsmacked" when he began talking to the source of inspiration for his forthcoming nonfiction debut — and that "astonishment" only grew as he kept researching the cult she recalled escaping from.

In The Oracle's Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult, out this April, the author explores what a synopsis calls the "true story of the rise and fall of a woman-led cult," The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps in Fence Lake, N.M.

"In 2019, my brother and his wife introduced me to their neighbor, Sarah Green — she’d escaped a cult run by her mother, and was ready to tell her story," Hill tells PEOPLE. "From our first conversation ... I knew I had to write about her."

He became more intrigued as he "spoke with other former members of the cult, went on reporting trips to California and rural New Mexico, and followed the legal battle surrounding the group that only concluded this past April," he adds.

"I’m so excited to bring readers into the world that has consumed me these past five and a half years, not just because I find the story so compelling, but because of what it reveals about America, America’s religious history and human nature itself — how all of us are surprisingly vulnerable to the call of extremism."

Ahead of the release, PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the cover of The Oracle's Daughter, which features an image of Sarah Green, who escaped both ACMTC and the treatment of her mother and its leader, Deborah Green, in 1999.

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Per a synopsis, the story follows "the fascinating beginnings and violent end of ACMTC" as well as the paths of three women: founder and self-proclaimed "oracle" Deborah, early member Maura and then Sarah herself. The three women, the synopsis explains, are "bound together by a punitive, baroque set of radical beliefs and practices," including "exorcism, kidnapping, prohibitions against the 'abominations' of popular music and psychoanalysis."

By exploring ACMTC's abuses and beliefs, the book also focused on 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," the synopsis adds. For decades following its founding in 1981 with her husband James Green, Deborah operated ACMTC. It later became the subject of an episode of People Magazine Investigates: Cults.

In 2018, Deborah — who was known as “General” to the group’s followers — was sentenced to 72 years in prison for multiple crimes against children, after being convicted of three counts of child rape, two counts of kidnapping and one count of child abuse. A judge later ordered her convictions on eight counts to be vacated, per KRQE, and she was released in 2022. A child abuse conviction was reinstated by the state Supreme Court earlier this year.

Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, former member Maura Schmierer — who previously sued ACMTC — characterized it as a cult in a court filing. Hill wrote about Sarah's experience for The Cut in June 2021.