The result is Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers and Garrison Keillor all rolled into one quirky, unforgettable read. Salvation Mountain is a hillside covered with biblical messages and symbols built over a 30-year period near Niland, Calif. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia Covington, Dennis on. When the author, himself Scottish-Irish, uncovers records of snake-handling Covingtons, he decides to take up serpents himself. The people of Southern Appalachia are hill people of Scottish-Irish descent-religious mystics who cast out demons, drink strychnine, and handle rattlesnakes. 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. The narrative begins when Covington starts reporting on Glenn Summerford’s trial for the attempted murder of his wife, Darlene, by rattlesnake bite. 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. Overview Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia is a work of non-fiction, originally published in 1995.

Salvation on sand mountain