Book Review: Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington
This paper reviews Dennis Covington's Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, a first-person account of Appalachian religious snake handling and strychnine drinking. Originally assigned to cover the 1992 attempted murder trial of snake-handling preacher Glenn Summerford, Covington—a Southerner with his own spiritual restlessness—gradually transformed from observer to participant. The review assesses the book's strengths, including Covington's cultural empathy, insider perspective, and personal candor, as well as its weaknesses, particularly his loss of journalistic objectivity and sometimes disorganized narrative structure.
- Introduction: Overview of book's subject and dual verdict
- Overview of the Book and Its Subject: Snake handling origins, Bible basis, Appalachian history
- Covington's Journey from Journalist to Snake Handler: Covington's transformation from observer to participant
- Strengths of Covington's Approach: Cultural empathy, insider insight, personal candor
- Weaknesses of Covington's Approach: Loss of objectivity, unsubstantiated claims, disorganization
- Conclusion: Final balanced assessment of book's merits
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What makes this paper effective
- The review balances praise and criticism in a structured, even-handed way, dedicating clear sections to both the book's strengths and its weaknesses rather than offering a one-sided verdict.
- Direct quotations from the source text are used strategically throughout, grounding each evaluative claim in textual evidence and demonstrating close reading.
- The student accurately situates the book within its historical and cultural context—explaining the Scotch-Irish origins of Appalachian fundamentalism—showing comprehension beyond surface plot summary.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates the technique of evaluative synthesis: the student does not merely summarize the book but applies a consistent evaluative lens (journalistic standards vs. personal narrative) to assess its merits and shortcomings. Each claim in the evaluation is tethered to a specific passage or quotation, modeling how to move from textual evidence to critical judgment.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear four-part structure: a brief introduction naming the work and its scope; a body section summarizing the book's content and narrative arc; two parallel analytical sections assessing strengths and weaknesses using the same organizational logic ("first… secondly… finally"); and a conclusion that restates the central evaluative thesis. This parallel structure makes the argument easy to follow and the criteria for judgment transparent.
Introduction
Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington tells the story of religious snake handling and strychnine drinking in Appalachia. Though the author was a journalist covering the 1992 attempted murder trial of a snake-handling preacher, his Southern background and personal religious search drew him to these dangerous religious practices. Beginning as an observer, Covington eventually became a snake handler himself and wrote about the background, meaning, and his own experience of the practice. The result is a book that is strong in some respects and weak in others.
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