A review by lines__lines
Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington

3.0

A fascinating look into a sliver of Appalachia about which I had known next to nothing when I started. Dennis Covington tells his own story as a journalist and as a journeyer into the snake-handling religious community of southern Appalachia. He gets involved to cover the story of Rev. Glenn Summerford, accused and convicted of trying to kill his wife, Darlene, with poisonous snakes. But as he attends church services, he gets drawn into the community and regains some spirituality he felt that he hadn't had since childhood. He finds that his own family tree is not far removed from these isolated rural communities of snake handlers. He imagines that he himself will take up handling and preaching. But by the end of his personal journey, Dennis leaves the snake handlers, though not because of debates about the role of women, the dangerous nature of snakes, or other tensions brought to light following Glenn Summerford's conviction, but rather because of a fundamental difference in the way he and they viewed the nature of God. At any rate, that's what he says. Though he does admit that he leaves, too, because he "refuse[s] to be a witness to suicide particularly [his] own. [He has] two daughters to raise, and a vocation in the world." Re-reading the last chapter and his own preaching about the right of women to also be preachers of the gospel, it sure seems that his leaving is for the more obvious reasons rather than the "nature of God" one, but I can see what he means by it. That the snake-handlers see the spreading of the gospel as a man's place (not that women can't handle or prophesy, for they do) stems from their view that only certain folks can access correctly God's intentions; one must be lead to righteousness and come to it from being led properly. Whereas Dennis in the end is seeing God as accessible to all, no matter what; that He is forgiving and sees all equally, so that even the poorest sinners are forgiven and can come easily into redemption simply by accepting it from God Himself. That's my reading of it, anyway. There's also some good story-telling about the people of the community and of what happened between Glenn and Darlene.