It all started with a trial. A man in southern Appalachia Alabama was accused of trying to kill his wife with a snake. It's an interesting way to attempt murder. Glenn Summerford put a gun to his wife's head and forced her to reach into a box containing a bunch of venomous snakes. She was bitten four times and survived to testify against her husband. After Dennis Covington covered the trial, published his piece, and tried to put the story out of his mind, a book editor came knocking. It didn't take much for him to convince Covington "this needs to be a full-length book" and Salvation on Sand Mountain was born. Covington immerses himself (and at times, his family) in the mysterious world of praying with dangerous snakes. What makes this journalism different is that Covington has ancestral history with preaching with snakes. As time with the congregation goes on and the more he observes their method of practicing their faith, Covington comes to care for the individual people, even Glenn Summerford. [Confessional: I sense Covington developing a crush on a member of the congregation as well.] Salvation on Sand Mountain culminates with Covington immersing himself completely by taking up a snake and preaching to the congregation he initially only wanted to write about. To think that it all began with a trial and a conviction. ( )

An amazing story of a reporter who travels to Appalachia to cover a murder-by-snakebite and gets drawn into the Holiness culture. ( )

Covington's book works for me because of his compassion and identification with his proposed subjects. He turns over the notion of this journalistic relationship, too, and this helps the work become restorative, in some ways, to the pursuit of spirituality in a Judeo-Christian faith within a distinctly American context. I'd be curious to know what all the folks in the text would have to say about neuroscience studies of the brain during the ecstatic moments Covington captures.

Dennis Covington was a reporter covering the juicy case of a backwoods Appalachian snake-handling preacher accused of the attempted murder of his wife. By poisonous snake. Yes, I said snake.

He came to the small community and began to learn about the preacher and his wife and the snake-handling congregation, where he eventually committed a reporter's greatest sin: he became personally involved with his subjects. He even moved to the area and joined the church as a full-fledged snake-handling member.

Neither expose nor apology, Salvation on Sand Mountain is a fascinating portrait both of an often derided spritual sect and of a normal, modern man who briefly finds spiritual renewal with them. Covington does eventually leave the church, but not for the reasons you might think.

If you ever heard of snake-handlers and were curious, this is the book to read: honest and non-judgemental, Covington allows readers to draw their own conclusions. ( )

This book was incredibly engaging. Dennis Covington originally travels to the Appalachian mountains of northeast Alabama to report on the trial of a snake handling preacher who is convicted for the attempted murder of his wife, who suffered multiple snake bites. After covering the trial, Covington realizes that that his story has just begun and he spends the next several years immersed in the lives of the snake handlers and their followers.

He is so moved by the religious services he attends that he loses his place as an objective journalist and becomes an active participant in the worship, even taking his wife and children with him to church. Covington does such a good job describing the people he meets and his experiences at the churches. The way he describes the music, the speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands, and the snake handling captures the general sense of euphoria and emotion present in the church. At times the services he described seemed like such a genuine reflection of faith and surrendering to something greater than oneself. At other times the services seemed like an abusive and manipulative practice designed by the preachers to gain power over the vulnerable. It was just so interesting.

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This is one of the best books I have ever read! It's well written and very interesting. It also has a mystery, a real-life one, the type I like best. It has a "surprise" ending of an unusual kind. This book stands out, and always comes to mind as one of my favorite books when asked for a recommendation. It's non-fiction but seems like fiction since some of the things in it are surreal. Dennis Covington is a journalist so his writing is clear and to the point.
Not sure what else to say except read it! ( )

What was originally intended to be a meditation on the trial of a Holiness pastor, Glenn Summerford, who was convicted of using snakes to kill his wife morphed into a rather bizarre memoir that follows the spiritual development (?) or devolution of an erstwhile Methodist to snake-handling Holiness followers in Scottsboro (yes, *that* Scottsboro**) Alabama. He traces his ancestors back to earlier generations of snake-handlers assuming in a rather Lamarckian fantasy that their fascination with holy rolling is genetic. He's clearly fascinated by his (and his daughter's) intense physical reaction to the music. A risk-taker himself, having been a journalist in war-torn Central America, where he had been under fire several times, one cannot help but wonder if putting oneself in danger doesn't have an exceptional appeal to some people.

His original idea was to write a book about these people. The result of is a very interesting cultural essay filled with delightful little tidbits of irrationality:

"She explained what they were, bare trees in rural yards adorned with colored glass bottles. Then I remembered I’d seen them before. I thought they were only decorative. But my neighbor told me spirit trees had a purpose. If you happen to have evil spirits, you put bottles on the branches of a tree in your yard. The more colorful the glass, the better, I suppose. The evil spirits get trapped in the bottles and won’t do you any harm. This is what Southerners in the country do with evil. But this nonsense -- in the literal sense -- is no different from the recent Pope Benedict's resurrection of the Office of the Exorcist. (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/436016/20130216/pope-benedict-exorcism-catholic-church-satan-father.htm)

His discussion of the origins of snake handling reinforces what I have learned elsewhere, i.e. that it represents a rejection and fear of encroaching industrialization with its concomitant societal upheaval.

"Snake handling, for instance, didn’t originate back in the hills somewhere. [A debatable point, I believe.] It started when people came down from the hills to discover they were surrounded by a hostile and spiritually dead culture. All along their border with the modern world — in places like Newport, Tennessee, and Sand Mountain, Alabama — they recoiled. They threw up defenses. When their own resources failed, they called down the Holy Ghost. They put their hands through fire. They drank poison. They took up serpents. They still do. The South hasn’t disappeared. If anything, it’s become more Southern in a last-ditch effort to save itself....Enter the snake handlers, spiritual nomads from the high country that surrounded Scottsboro, from isolated pockets on Sand Mountain and the hollows along South Sauty Creek. They were refugees from a culture on the ropes. They spoke in tongues, anointed one another with oil in order to be healed, and when instructed by the Holy Ghost, drank poison, held fire, and took up poisonous snakes. For them, Scottsboro itself was the wicked, wider world, a place where one might be tempted to “back up on the Lord.” They’d taken the risk, though, out of economic desperation. They had been drawn to Scottsboro by the promise of jobs in the mills that made clothes, carpets, rugs, and tires. Some of them had found work. All of them had found prejudice."

The author finds himself drawn to the emotional excess of the handler "services" and his description of becoming part of the experience, handling a huge timber rattler, is, for him, quite exotic and unsettling. But his rational side also admits to being drawn to danger. He describes the experience this way: "It occurred to me then that seeing a handler in the ecstasy of an anointing is not like seeing religious ecstasy at all. The expression seems to have more to do with Eros than with God, in the same way that sex often seems to have more to do with death than with pleasure. The similarity is more than coincidence, I thought. In both sexual and religious ecstasy, the first thing that goes is self. The entrance into ecstasy is surrender. Handlers talk about receiving the Holy Ghost. But when the Holy Ghost is fully come upon someone like Gracie McAllister, the expression on her face reads exactly the opposite — as though someone, or something, were being violently taken away from her. The paradox of Christianity, one of many of which Jesus speaks, is that only in losing ourselves do we find ourselves, and perhaps that’s why photos of the handlers so often seem to be portraits of loss."

One is tempted to look for a rational reason why the snakes don't bite more often, but the fact remains they bite all the time and deaths from snakebite are disproportionately large compared to those in the general population. Handling is clearly stressful for the snakes who rarely live out a season whereas they can survive for several decades in the wild. Often the snakes will die while being handled. They are certainly untameable and contrary to popular opinion one does not attain a certain immunity to snake venom after multiple bites. To the contrary, one is more likely to develop an allergic sensitivity.

My rational side recoils from the unfathomable need of these people to lose themselves in what is clearly something very precious and moving. Having read three different accounts of snake handling (not to mention strychnine-drinking), I remain baffled but fascinated.


**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottsboro_Boys
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"What about Darlene?"
"When she was really living right, she drank it," he said.
When she was really living right, she drank poison. What a peculiar idea, the journalist in me thought. But who was I to judge?

The story begins when Dennis Covington, a freelance journalist, is asked to write an article about a trial taking place in nearby Scottsboro, Alabama, in which a preacher stands accused of trying to kill his wife with the venomous snakes he uses in his church services. Covington's coverage of this lurid story is the least interesting thing in Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, but it forms Covington's introduction to a little known and oft-mocked sect of Pentecostal Christianity.

Snake handling began, not as a practice of the people living in the Appalachians, but when they came out of the mountains to work in the mill towns on either side of the range. Confronted with an alien culture, they fell back on their faith, creating their own version of Christianity. The first episode of snake handling occurred in 1910 and while the churches that practice it range from the Florida panhandle up into Ohio, the number of worshippers is small. They also drink poison and handle fire, but the focus is on the snakes, the rattlesnakes and copperheads and even cobras that they collect, keeping them in sheds or even in aquariums set on the kitchen counter.

It might seem odd that this small, tightly knit community would open their doors to Covington, who is clear about his occupation and about his intention to write about them, often bringing photographers with him to church services. But they believe as strongly (and probably much more so) in their version of the truth as any other believer. They are willing to travel for hundreds of miles several times a week to attend services in small, tucked away churches in forgotten communities all along the edges of Appalachia. And Covington is respectful and interested in their beliefs. So interested that he becomes, for a time, one of them, like an anthropologist joining in the private ceremonies of a remote tribe.

Snake handling isn't a safe practice, and there are few who haven't been bit, many more than once. Some seek medical help, but most don't and most have relatives who were killed by snakes. The snakes themselves don't fare much better. Snake handling isn't gentle, and the snakes aren't designed to be roughly shaken and jostled. Few last longer than a few months.

She had a video, though, of herself and others holding their arms and legs in the flame of the kerosene-soaked wick. That's what she was doing one July night after she'd sworn she'd never handle rattlesnakes in July again. She'd been bit the previous two Julys. "I decided I'd just handle fire and drink strychnine that night," she said.

Good idea, I thought. It always pays to be on the safe side.

The problem arose as Gracie tried to handle the fire with her feet. She lost her balance and fell on top of three serpent boxes. "I crawled on my knees and got every one of them serpents out," she said. "My friends said, 'Gracie, you said you wasn't gonna handle serpents tonight,' and I said, 'I wouldn't if I hadn't gotten in the fire.'"

It all came to an end a few years after he met those members of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following. The rapid inclusion of an outsider into a group of only a few hundred people, many of whom were related, caused a certain amount of friction. The connection was broken, finally, when he was asked to speak at one service and stepped over a line by contradicting the previous sermon, by his mentor, who railed against women, saying, A woman's got to stay in her place! God made her helpmeet to man! It wasn't intended for her to have a life of her own! If God had wanted to give her a life of her own, he'd have made her first instead of Adam, and then where would we be!" Covington counters that by reminding him that, after his resurrection, Jesus appeared first to a woman, who brought the news to the remaining disciples, making her the first evangelist. And, with that, his time with them came to its end.

At the height of it all...I had actually pictured myself preaching out of my car with a Bible, a trunkload of rattlesnakes, and a megaphone. I had wondered what it would be like to hand rattlesnakes to my wife and daughters. I had imagined getting bit and surviving. I had imagined getting bit and not surviving. I had thought about what my last words would be. It sounds funny now. It wasn't always funny at the time. ( )

A journalist, himself from the South, is investigating a story where a cult snakehandler had attempted to kill his wife with rattlesnakes. The deeper he gets into the story, the more he becomes enamoured of snake-handling as a religious act. A believer now, the journalist joins the Church of Jesus With Signs Following and becomes a snake handler himself. Ultimately, the investigation left behind, his liberal political beliefs conflict with the traditional religious ones of the Church and, quite suddenly, the book ends. Cognitive dissonance without resolution?

It is a fantastic read, a first-hand account of exactly how to handle snakes and the almost orgasmic joy of what religious ecstasy feels like. ( )

I thought this would be all religion and such, but because it was written by someone who is is coming in to a community to try and understand the culture, it's done very well. The basic idea is not a focus on the law issues with snake handlers and attempted murder or a strict focus on the religion itself, the idea behind this book is that times have changed and the culture of snake handling is dying and should be preserved, but also the culture in the areas around it is changing drastically, which alters the views of these dying religions. I found these realizations very, very interesting, since I have never really looked around me and thought of how much is different since even I was born.

People who pick this book up because they want a strict study on snake handling religions need to look elsewhere. This is a creatively written journey of one man who is interested in learning about a people and puts himself inside of their small group to understand them and to record their culture before it is gone completely. It centers less around religion and more around discovery of oneself. The author spends some time writing on how he feels about wanting to be a part of this group and wondering if there are snake handling roots in his background that might create a genetic memory of some kind, causing him to be so focused on this group and becoming a part of it.

I highly recommend Salvation on Sand Mountain because it helps you to understand the religion itself, but it also helps you to understand the culture surrounding it. The idea of "south" has changed and I was shocked to realize that I was not as southern as I originally had thought. ( )

A dear friend told me I had to read this book, and though I rarely comply with such requests, I did this time, and I am so glad I did. It's about a whole different world. Covington brings this world to vivid life, and he does so with respect and empathy. This remarkable book will enable you to walk vicariously in some very unique shoes. Highly recommended. ( )

Mildly interesting. I was looking more research on the religious aspect of snake handling and other extremism and the attempted murder that was touched upon in the book. ( )

Our bookclub found this quite an interesting book and talked for 2 solid hours about it. We did not know much about "snake handling" or charismatic evangelism. The book turned out to be more about the spiritual journey of the author and his desire to 'feel'. He seemed an unsettled sort who would put himself in dangerous locations for articles (El Salvador) and then on to the snake handling all in an effort "so it seemed to us" to find himself or perhaps feel alive. ( )

I found this book to be a powerful exploration of what is at once both a very simple and very complex faith. The trust that Covington describes is incomprehensible and wonderful; the absolute, unswerving faith in the midst of what is a very real, very evil world is amazing. Covington does an excellent job of presenting a portrait of something that has survived against the odds; what he describes is a world that some may have difficulty believing exists. The book is gripping and moving. It may be a challenge for a "modern" reader to fully understand this faith, but this novel is certainly an example of how anyone, even a seasoned reporter, can be moved by an old gas station, some rousing music, and a box of snakes. ( )

Readers looking for an exposé or critique of snake-handling culture will be disappointed by Salvation on Sand Mountain, but that’s only because they are looking in the wrong place. This is a book about the people of a movement and their struggles, both personal and corporate. Yes, some of the stories are salacious, but just as many are heart-wrenching, or baffling, or rage-inducing. And all are worth reading.

Ultimately, Covington involves himself with the community so deeply that he crosses boundaries and finds himself pushed out. And that is for the best. He says, “I had found my people. But I had also discovered that I couldn’t be one of them after all.”

If you have to classify Salvation on Sand Mountain, think of it as a journalistic memoir, but if you can get beyond the label, you’ll find a wonderfully-written, emotionally compelling story populated with unforgettable characters and an unknowable system of beliefs.

Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog. ( )

Not terribly well written or edited, but very interesting subject matter. I live in the north Georgia area and have traveled over Sand Mountain many times. There is something morbidly fascinating about people who handle serpents as part of their religion. That little tri state corner, of Al, Ga and Tn is quite different from any other area I have been to. ( )

Reading this book coincided with a trip I took to northern Alabama. I even went to Scottsboro, but alas, could not convince my travel companions to seek out a snake-handling church service.

I found the subject matter of the book fascinating, and the writing style perfectly suited to the material: direct, vivid, and clear. Covington brings people and places alive without condescension or glorification. He conveys sincere admiration and appreciation for many of the handlers, and his own internal conflicts: observer vs participant, doubter vs believer. ( )

This book is a little difficult to describe and I had mixed feelings about it, especially at first. It was favorably mentioned on LT when I first started reading posts in August and I remembered that when I saw it on a sale table--buy one for $2.99 and get a 2nd one free. This was the free one! I ended up really liking it because it is a fascinating account about an unusual type of religious experience that is still being practiced. Covington gives a sympathetic but balanced view of these people who handle snakes and drink strychnine as well as speaking in tongues during their church services and helps us understand why they worship the way they do. He was first introduced to this sub culture when he went as a journalist to cover a trial of one of the preachers whose wife had him arrested for attempted murder, claiming he had forced her to put her hand in a box of rattlesnakes and then refused to let her seek medical treatment when she was dying of the snake bites. After the trial he became interested in this religious group and their worship practices and followed them for about two years, documenting their activities and even, for a while, participating with them in their services. He therefore was able to gain firsthand experiential understanding of what happens to a person during these times of “ecstasy.” Although, in the end he went back to his own church he still maintains his respect for many of the people he encountered during this time and helps us to be able to see them as individuals with virtues and faults like everyone else rather then lumping into a category of "crazy fanatics." Of course, they probably could be considered fanatics but don't most people have something that they are fanatic about? I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about different religious experiences. ( )

http://purplemoonstar.livejournal.com/235277.html ( )

Fascinating look at Appalachian snake handlers. You won't be able to put it down. ( )