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

Some of the elements in this book are truly stranger than fiction, but Covington has kept everything true to his eyewitness accounts. What do you think drew Covington to this choice? Do you think his story is relatable? Is it believable?

Covington casts a wide net of characters and settings in this text, relying on the snake-handling church as connective tissue. Is it important to keep track of them all individually, or are there more important elements that demand one’s focus? If so, what are they? How, if at all, do they interact with the wider community?

What does snakehandling represent in this book? What does it mean to (and for) Dennis Covington? What is its deeper spiritual use in the church community?

As a work of non-fiction, why do you think Covington has included such a large amount of his personal life in this text? Does this decision reflect his own immersion in the community in any way?

Is Salvation on Sand Mountain a memoir? Why, or why not?

Themes of religious and family love are prevalent in this text, although they are often expressed in argumentative and even violent ways within the church community. What are some positive ways the reader sees love being expressed in this book? How does it compare with the rest?

None of the people in this book are portrayed as being all that likeable, with Dennis Covington being no exception. Are there any redeemable characters in this book? How does this affect one’s reading of the text?

At its start, the lens of this story is set closely on Glenn Summerford—but it moves fairly quickly away, due to his prison sentence and Covington’s participation in the wider community of which Summerford had once been an integral member. What might this book have been like if Summerford had remained the focus throughout? Outline the alternative text here, as you imagine it.