Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

A haunting exploration of faith, from a preacher convicted of attempted murder to a first-hand account of holiness serpent handling--"One of the best books on American religion from the last 25 years" (Chicago Tribune)

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.

• Nine Theories of Religion
• Anthropology and Religion: What We Know, Think, and Question
• The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America
• American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon
• Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India
• A River Sutra
• Religion in America (8th Edition)
• The Sabbath (FSG Classics)
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (FSG Classics)
• Mariette in Ecstasy