Tomeiko Ashford Carter offers insight into the writings of a black female preacher in nineteenth-century America and shows how she helped start a revolution of "spirit-writing". Spirit-writing offered black, female authors a sanctuary where they could create powerful leading female characters who live by their own brands of Christian theology. In Powers Divine, Carter calls attention to subsequent black female writers whose fiction demonstrates the legacies of life and spirit-writing by combining autobiographical information and steadfast reliance on the spiritual. Carter does not leave out black male writers whom she discovers have created their own versions of divine women since the nineteenth-century. Carter finds selected black male writers especially concern themselves with the "imperfections" of the divine heroine. Powers Divine provides unique insight into the personal and professional lives of authors, offering an engaging look at the compelling divine characters they create and the innovative spiritual books they write.