This book tells the extraordinary story of Mabel Barltrop (1866–1934) and a circle of followers who believed her to be the daughter of God. Renaming her ‘Octavia’, in 1919, Barltrop's disciples formed the Community of the Holy Ghost (the Panacea Society from 1926). They established an apocalyptic community in interwar Bedford; a ‘New Jerusalem’ in preparation for the millennial rule of Christ on earth. Here this spiritual group – shaped by an eclectic range of influences, including vogue-ish ‘new’ spiritualities of the period and High Churchmanship – maintained the belief that through a process of ‘Overcoming’ sin, primarily through the act of confession, immortality could be attained. ‘The whole raison d'etre of the Society is to get together THOSE WHO WILL NOT DIE’, they declared, believing that the three-mile radius around their Bedford chapel was the original Garden of Eden. The study of the theology, rituals and life of this small group (at its height only seventy people lived in the community) is detailed but fascinating. This was a feminised religion, influenced by the writings of Joanna Southcott (of whom Barltrop was supposed to be ‘Shiloh’, her spiritual child) a century earlier, but also by James Jezreel and John Wroe's belief that Christ's death had saved only souls and only the daughter of God could redeem the body. The book is particularly insightful as a study of the dynamics of a new religious group: the influence of a charismatic leader; the growth of a hierarchy; spiritual, domestic and sexual struggles and rivalries; and the challenge of defining the group against the world outside. However, the genius of this study is that it both illuminates and is illuminated by the spiritual, social and cultural context. It is an important addition to the historiography of esoteric religion in the period, and a reminder of the sometimes blurred boundaries between heterodox and ‘orthodox’. The community's practice of confession is assessed in the light of the broader appeal of practical psychology, the spiritual dimension of which Shaw helpfully identifies in the activities of Maude Royden and Frank Buchman. The group, Shaw suggests, might be seen as a spiritual version of one of Richard Overy's ‘networks of anxiety’ in the post-war age. Death, alas, came to Barltrop and her followers, and the basis of hope for the remnant quickly shifted to her second coming (meanwhile, it was suggested, deceased members would wait on the planet Uranus until they returned with resurrected bodies). Beautifully researched and written, based on the remarkable archives of the Panaceans, this book is exemplar of a critical, yet deeply sympathetic, biography of a religious community.