Recently I have been re-reading some my favorite books. I just finished Ann B. Ross’s novel, “Miss Julia to the Rescue” and Ann George’s “Murder Carries a Torch.”
Ann B. Ross wrote a series about Miss Julia. In “Miss Julia to the Rescue,” she and her handy home helper Etta Mae Wiggins head to West Virginia to help a friend and wind up in snake-handling church. Ann George is a Birmingham native who wrote “cozy mysteries” about two sisters who keep finding dead bodies. “Murder Carries a Torch” is about snake-handling churches near Scottsboro. Ann George references “Salvation on Sand Mountain” in her novel. While I have phobia of snakes, sticks that look like snakes, garden hoses that look snakes and pictures of snakes, I felt compelled to learn more.
The novel starts during a night of terror for Darlene Summerford. Her husband Glenn (a known snake handler) is drunk and has decided he wants to kill her. Glenn has already forced her to stick her hand in the snake cage once. A rattlesnake is the first to bite her. She is in pain, her hand is turning black and she feels like she might pass out. Darlene said Glenn beat on the snakes’ cages to get them really mad. He forced her at gunpoint to reach into his container of snakes again. She said he threatened to shove her face in the snake container. So she puts her hand back in the cage. This time she is bitten by a canebrake rattler. He forced her to write a suicide note to their son.
Apparently, Glenn wanted to marry a younger women and thought murder was quicker than divorce. Eventually, Glenn passes out from the vodka he has been drinking for hours. Darlene is able to call a family friend to pick her up out on the road to take her to the emergency room. While many of the snake-handling community thought Glenn was innocent, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison, and he is serving another 30-year sentence for his escape attempt in 2004.
The author Dennis Covington, a Birmingham native who was a reporter covering the trial, became so fascinated by the snake handlers that he started attending the churches that handled snakes and drank strychnine. He became close friends with many of the preachers.
Eventually, Covington began traveling around the Southeast attending different churches. He began to understand the religious fervor of the snake handlers, who feel like they are actually touching God. As Covington experiences ecstasy of snake handling, he begins to sit at the front of the church where the handlers sit. He occasionally touches the snakes. Eventually, he took his wife and two young daughters to the services so they could experience it, too. After several months of attending the snake-handling church, Covington was ready to go back to his Methodist Church. The time he spent with the handlers helped him research his novel.
“Salvation on Sand Mountain” was won several awards including National Book Award Finalist, Clarence Cason Award, Alabama Author Award and the Boston Book Review’s Anne Rea Jewell Non-Fiction Prize.
I am glad I read this book even though I cringed and felt uncomfortable reading about snake handling. Especially the parts about a preacher picking up handfuls of snakes and putting them on his shoulders and on his face. Also, it was hard to read about the handlers who were bitten by the snakes. Most church members considered going to the hospital for treatment a sin. I encourage y’all to try to read it.
Learn more about Covington at www.theamericanscholar.org/author/dennis-covington.
