Willis author Jack Crumpler looks at the different sides of televangelism in his first novel, Sister Cathedra, published by Panther Creek Press. The title refers to the ‘screen name’ created for Leeandra Kay Stevens, the daughter of small-time Texas evangelist Joe Ted Stevens. The Stevens Crusade has been holding its own in small tent appearances but Jerome Hoffstedtler (Hoff to his friends) thinks their style will appeal to a larger audience. Hoff has his fingers dipped in just about every type of business known to mankind. He’s in it for the money, but that doesn’t mean he can’t also do something that will benefit the Stevens family. He wants to provide the Crusade with television access, something the family had been aspiring to for years but couldn’t finance on its own. The Stevens Crusade will benefit from the exposure and Hoff and his associates will make money. Everyone wins. Joe Ted is a potent, charismatic preacher, earnest and genuine. The Stevens’ ace-in-the-hole, though, is Leeandra. Young, beautiful and a moving singer, she will be a powerful draw to the televised ministry. Plucked from obscurity, the Stevens Crusade becomes the hottest ticket in religious programming. Crisis strikes soon after their rise to fame, though, when Joe Ted suffers a heart attack and the ministry loses its guiding spirit. Hoff, already smitten by Leeandra but wary of mixing business and pleasure, proposes to Leeandra that she take over her father’s preaching role. He christens her Sister Cathedra, named for the word for a bishop’s chair. She becomes a marketing commodity, appearing on TV morning shows and radio interviews. Used to intimate tent services, she is propelled to such venues as the Astrodome, where her face is projected on the big screen to tens of thousands of adoring worshippers and broadcast nationwide. Not everyone adores Sister Cathedra, though. Several forces are converging on her, including a greasy minister who wants to merge forces with Leeandra, a maimed, lonely and tormented fan, and a self-appointed prosecutor of fraudulent televangelists who has been wielding God’s Silver Broom across the nation. Leeandra is overwhelmed by the sudden, enormous changes in her life. Still grieving over the deaths of her husband and children in a boating tragedy several years earlier and the more recent loss of her father, she is confused by her new relationship with Hoff and the monumental responsibility of preaching and performing in front of thousands of people. Jack Crumpler is a semi-retired journalist who attended tent revival services as a young man growing up in Abilene. Those experiences formed the germ that, over the course of twenty years, grew into Sister Cathedra. His years in marketing and public relations for The Woodlands Corp probably also provided him with material for Hoff and his colleagues. Crumpler creates two strong and complex individuals in Hoff and Leeandra. Their paths are destined to overlap regularly over the course of their business relationship and developing romance, but they each also have lives of their own that pull them in different directions. Hoff has other business dealings besides the Stevens Crusade and a confused relationship with his third ex-wife, Margo. Crumpler also shows us that he has a dangerous edge. Leeandra has a timid brother who is jealous of her sudden fame and other hangers-on who want to be part of the action. Deftly weaving together several threads, Crumpler sets up a finale at the Louisiana Superdome where all the major players will be under the same roof for the first time and everyone’s faiths will be tested and shown for what they really are. Web site and all contents © Copyright Bev Vincent 2023. All rights reserved. |
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