cover image The Serpent Handlers: Three Families and Their Faith

The Serpent Handlers: Three Families and Their Faith

Fred W. Brown. John F. Blair Publisher, $19.95 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-89587-191-6

Husband-and-wife team Brown and McDonald here introduce readers to the Elkinses of West Virginia, the Browns of Tennessee and the Cootses of Kentucky. The book provides a fascinating foray into the life of these faithful snake-handling families. Especially absorbing are discussions of the miraculous healing of Gregory Coots's eye, which was damaged by gunshot when he was six years old; the poignant story of matriarch Barbara Robinson Elkins's 23-year-old daughter, Columbia, dying of a snakebite wound; and Joe Robert Elkins's testimony that he once died of a snakebite wound, ascended to the ""most beautifuliest place I ever seen"" and was brought back to life because God listened to the earnest pleadings of his fellow church members. Interspersed throughout Brown and McDonald's analysis are passages, drawn from interviews, in which the snake handlers speak for themselves; these sections, without question, are the richest in the book. The authors insist that their subjects are fiercely independent mountain people, but the frequent gestures in the direction of abusive coal-mining fathers and pious God-fearing mothers box the three families into familiar cliches. Readers with time for only one book on snake handling should stick to Dennis Covington's prize-winning Salvation on Sand Mountain; those less easily sated will enjoy this, but they may want to skip Brown and McDonald's commentary and go straight to the handlers themselves. (May)