Book Review: Salvation on Sand Mountain

NON-FICTION

By Dennis Covington

ISBN 0-201-62292-0; 1995, 240 p.

(National Book Award Finalist)

In October of 1991, Glenn Summerford attempted to kill his wife Darlene by forcing her, at gunpoint, to stick her hand into a cage with an angry canebrake rattlesnake. Glenn Summerford was at that time pastor of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following in Scottsboro, Alabama. Members of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following regularly practiced snake handling, speaking in tongues, laying on hands and ingestion of strychnine, and Summerford had 17 rattlesnakes in cages behind his house, for use in churchservices.

Darlene Summerford managed to escape, and called a neighbor to summon an ambulance. "And later, much later, it seems, when the ambulance attendant takes her arm in the middle of the road, it's as though he is escorting her through a door into a bright room where all this can be explained and given a name. He tells her not to be afraid, and they hook her up to a machine and give her oxygen and wash her hand off, the one that was bit. It is such a simple thing for the attendant to do, but she thinks about it on the way to the emergency room, and later that night, when the same ambulance attendant accompanies her to the big university hospital in Birmingham, she is thinking about how nice it was to have her hand washed off like that. Her hand was mostly numb, but she could still feel it a little, a gentle anointing, both warm and cold, like something she'd receive in the church, and she realizes she's been trying to get herself clean from one thing or another for as long as she can remember."

In Salvation on Sand Mountain, Covington gives an in-depth account of Darlene Summerford's ordeal and the resulting trial and conviction of Glenn Summerford for attempted murder. At the same time, he relates the fascinating spiritual journey he took while researching the book.

The trial was messy, bringing to light the violence, infidelity, and alcoholism in the Summerford home, and causing a divide among their friends and fellow church-members.

While covering the trial, Covington got to know the Summerfords and many members of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following. His attempts to understand their beliefs and practices led him on a bizarre journey into the world of snake-handling, speaking in tongues, and underground religion.

Unlike many in the national media, Covington didn't merely dismiss the Church members as "crazy snake-handlers." Instead, he spent time with many of the members, attended many of their services, and eventually found himself an active participant. This interaction with another faith that at first seemed totally foreign to him eventually led Covington to question his own beliefs.

Covington's book provides a glimpse of a religious world that few of us see firsthand, and lets us meet many fascinating people on the way. His travels while researching the book take to Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky, to see famous snake handlers, and to attend revivals and brush arbor meetings all over the South.

A passage from the first chapter sets the tone for the journey Covington takes, (and the one you can share by reading the book). In that chapter, Covington is debating with himself whether to attend, for the first time, a service in a snake-handlers' church:

"There are moments when you stand on the brink of a new experience and understand that you have no choice about it. Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a permanent way. Either way, there will be consequences. I walked on in."