Ann the Word: The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers, the Woman Clothed with the Sun

Ann Lee is perhaps one of the most remarkable and mystifying women in the history of Western culture. Few could have imagined that humble beginnings in Manchester, England, would lead to the illiterate daughter of a blacksmith overcoming personal anguish and increasingly Puritanical sentiments in England and rising to become a visionary religious leader, thought by her followers to have been the second incarnation of Christ.

After the deaths of her four children, Ann was committed to an in…