A review of Richard McNemar: Frontier Heretic and Shaker Apostle (Indiana University Press, 2023), by Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie, appears in the June issue of Indiana Magazine of History. The book is described by the publisher as “the first biography of a key and complex American religious figure of the 19th century, considered by many to be the ‘father of Shaker literature.’”
Reviewer James Hudnut-Beumler of Vanderbilt University called Goodwillie’s book “outstanding,” saying it is “a testament to the archivist’s command of the written record and to the records McNemar and the Shakers left behind that others might remember them.”
Describing Goodwillie as a skillful narrator, he said “the book is a revelation of what made Shaker life so vital in the first half of the nineteenth century.” Hudnut-Beumler also commended Goodwillie for “the quality of the scholarly apparatus, including appendices that provide the evidence of McNemar’s genius and the vulnerability of both man and movement.”
According to the Indiana University Press website, the Indiana Magazine of History has been published continuously since 1905 and “is one of the nation’s oldest historical journals.”
Posted September 4, 2025
