Religions are based on faith, and faith is, by definition, what a believer feels to be true but can't prove. So it's fitting that "Holy Ghost Girl," Donna Johnson's beautifully written and super-absorbing memoir of growing up on the tent revival circuit, is full of vivid and sometimes shocking events that only she can certify as happening as she says. This squishy fact issue has dogged memoirs in the past -- think Augusten Burroughs and James Frey. But "Holy Ghost Girl" avoids the truthiness morass by crafting a story so alive with drama and color and emotional truth that the absolute veracity of every recounted detail is immaterial to the experience of reading this highly enjoyable and deeply moving book.

Johnson's mother was an organist for a revival, the type of evangelical Christian group that goes from town to town erecting a huge tent and holding Pentecostal services that go on for hours or days. Led by feverishly devout preacher "Brother" David Terrell, Johnson describes a youth spent crisscrossing the Bible Belt with the small band of zealots that made up Terrell's inner circle. They lived austerely off the kindness of strangers and rejected the hedonism of "normal" society. Johnson recalls the practical discomforts of the life, such as trying to sleep on a cold folding chair while a revival service stretches into the wee hours, as well as the spiritual discomfort of being forever on guard for Satan's treachery and the wrath of God upon the world. But she also captures the hopefulness of the participants and the euphoria experienced when a group of like-minded people gather and believe miracles can be done.

Though she has long since rejected the theology, Johnson never doubts the authenticity of the spiritual transcendence experienced by the legions of poor and marginalized glory seekers who filed into that gigantic tent when it came through their town. "In him they saw a more powerful, dazzling image of themselves," Johnson writes of Terrell's followers. "He came from the same grim poverty that had shaped them, but it did not cling to him. His smile held out a promise; what it was they couldn't have told you, but the memory of it lingered for days after they saw him. He was one of them, but his face lacked the hopeless, haunted expression they glimpsed as they walked past streaky storefront windows. ... He was them without the shame. He was them without the hopelessness. And oh how they loved him for it."

Terrell's ministry becomes bogged down in sexual hypocrisy -- he has a years-long affair with Johnson's mother -- and financial excess. Johnson leaves Brother Terrell's ministry forever at 17. Though she easily discards the extreme philosophies of the religion, the intense and unusual nature of her childhood leaves an unsettling echo. Years later, Johnson is at a wild party when she hears a strangely familiar tune. She finds a woman on the porch, another former Pentecostal, strumming a guitar and singing a song popular at revivals.

"There's power there," Johnson recalls the woman saying. "Can't deny that."

Cherie Parker is a writer in Washington, D.C.