Name: Salvation on Sand Mountain
ISBN: 9780140254587

Dennis Covington

A journalist describes an assignment in the mountains of Alabama which led to his spiritual journey into the world of holiness snake handling, a faith whose followers characteristically place themselves in life-threatening situations. Reprint. Tour.

Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

Salvation on Sand Mountain

Max Bodach

Read to understand the strange and wild and enchanting elements of American Christianity that we don’t typically talk about. It’s also an incredible memoir and one of his conclusions, that snake-handling Pentecostals are genuine mystics who are exiled by necessity, will stick with me for a very long time.

Andrea Badgley

Fascinating nonfiction read about the culture of snake handling Pentacostalists in Southern Appalachia. The author originally approached the story as a journalist covering an attempted murder trial. A snake handling preacher was convicted of putting a gun to his wife's head and forcing her to put her hand in a rattlesnake cage, where she was then bitten. The author covered the story, but was captivated by the snake handlers' culture, and as he got deeper into their stories while simultaneously tracing his own family's roots, he became part of the story himself. He writes their faith beautifully and convincingly, but as time progressed, he also began to see the handlers' too human faults and hypocrisies. I enjoyed the book immensely - I think I read it in two days - but was not satisfied with the ending.

Half Yeti, All Man

Gabe Cortez

Colton Ray

For New York Times reporter Dennis Covington, what began as a journalistic assignment—covering the trial of an Alabama pastor convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes—would evolve into a headlong plunge into a bizarre, mysterious, and ultimately irresistible world of unshakable faith: the world of holiness snake handling. Set in the heart of Appalachia, Salvation on Sand Mountain is Covington's unsurpassed and chillingly captivating exploration of the nature, power, and extremity of faith—an exploration that gradually turns inward, until Covington finds himself taking up the snakes.

Salvation on Sand Mountain Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

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