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| The Serpent and the Spirit: Glenn Summerford's Story | 
| Author: Thomas Burton
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.43
You Save: $7.52 (38%)
New (13) from $12.43
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 299646
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1572332468
Dewey Decimal Number: 345.7302523
EAN: 9781572332461
ASIN: 1572332468
Publication Date: May 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New American book. Shipped within the US in 4-7 days (expedited) or about 10-14 days (standard). Standard can occasionally be slower so we advise using expedited if quicker delivery is important!
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Product Description
A comprehensive, multilayered set of narratives telling the story of Holiness snake-handling preacher Glenn Summerford, who is serving ninety-nine years for attempting to murder his wife, Darlene, by forcing her to be bitten by a rattlesnake.
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| Customer Reviews:
The Serpent and the Spirit July 26, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
By employing a non-traditional, storytelling technique making use of court records and transcriptions of taped interviews, Thomas Burton has told a documentary-like tale of people whose lives are as confusing and bizarre as any that Flannery O'Conner's fiction could have created. Glenn Summerford, a serpent-handling, Holiness preacher was accused of attempted murder, convicted, and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. His wife Darlene alleged that he forced her at gunpoint, while he was in a drunken rage, to put her hand into a box of poisonous snakes that Glenn kept at home for use in his church services. She was, according to medical attendants, bitten and hospitalized, but "the truth" of the matter is clouded from the outset. Some of those interviewed claim the whole court procedure was rigged in an attempt to rid Jackson County, Alabama, of Summerford and the practices of his congregation -- which church members sincerely believe is a way for them to show their obedience to the Word of God. Glenn's two wives, as well as his children by both women, all have differing accounts of what could have happened -- and for the motives of those involved.
No matter what the reality of the situation, Burton has tried to unravel, as Robert Browning did with his verse monologues in The Ring and the Book, the immensely complicated, and ultimately unfathomable mess that life can be for all of us, and the writer has done so in a highly entertaining and readable fashion.--Michael Davenport
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