|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
For "New York Times" reporter Dennis Covington, what began as a
journalistic assignment--covering the trial of an Alabama pastor
convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous
snakes--would evolve into a headlong plunge into a bizarre,
mysterious, and ultimately irresistible world of unshakable faith:
the world of holiness snake handling.
Set in the heart of Appalachia, "Salvation on Sand Mountain" is
Covington's unsurpassed and chillingly captivating exploration of
the nature, power, and extremity of faith--an exploration that
gradually turns inward, until Covington finds himself taking up the
snakes.
"Marriage is like a rain forest," Vicki Covington writes in
Cleaving. "The story of a marriage contains all that grows in the
canopy, all that is visible from an aerial, or public, view. The
understory of a marriage is the place where . . . we struggle,
fight, and conceive. It's the place where compost is made, where
anything can grow, including forgiveness." Told in the authors'
alternating voices, Cleaving is both the story and the understory
of a marriage.
Childhood acquaintances, Vicki and Dennis meet again in their
twenties and wed. they "promise each other nothing" and get more
than they'd bargained for: alcoholism, infidelity, infertility,
uncertainty. tumult gives way to sobriety, parenthood, and
meaningful work, but a yearning remains. In a quest to root
themselves in the larger world, they embark on a mission to dig
water wells in Central America, assuaging a spiritual thirst by
addressing a practical need. Yet even this is part of the story-the
visible, overarching canopy-of the marriage. The understory-and the
triumph of this haunting book, which is neither sentimental nor
cynical-is its portrayal of the eddying of passion through the
institution that enshrines but cannot contain it.
A soulful and unsparing portrait of the forces that threaten-and
sustain-a relationship over time.
|
|