Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington

In 1992, pastor Glen Summerford of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following was convicted of attempting to murder his wife with rattlesnakes. After the trial, the church he left behind in Sand Mountain, Alabama was at a loss. Dennis Covington was a freelance journalist who covered Summerford's trial, and he soon became invested in the church and its struggle to continue. In Salvation on Sand Mountain, Covington describes his experience in the snake handling church community of the Appalachias, and the way in which this frenzied faith causes him to wrestle with his own beliefs and history.

Dennis Covington grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He earned a BA degree in fiction writing at the University of Virginia, then joined the United States army. After being discharged, he enrolled in the University of Iowa Writer's workshop. His first book, Lizard, won the Delacorte Prize in 1991, and Salvation on Sand Mountain won the Rea Non-fiction Prize and was a National Book Award finalist in 1995. He served for a time as the director of creative writing in the English department at UAB.