THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD tells of men and women who find themselves brought together as they seek common ground in a world close to our own, but bizarre enough to approach the grotesque that Flannery O'Connor said was necessary to shock readers into a realization of the misshapen nature of our times. Faith and the patterns of belief and practice that grow from faith can distort our lives or help us find order in a world of chaos. Sometimes they do both. THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD takes the reader into precarious border lands where faith and chaos can seem indistinguishable. All the novel's central characters struggle with matters of faith, be it in science, religion, hallucinations, or pure reason. Set in Lunsford, Random County, North Carolina a town the mountains of the western part of the state, THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD tells the story of six people, women and men whose lives become entwined in a complex mixture of love, fear, and violence, culminating in a ritual during which people handle deadly serpents as an expression of religious beliefs based on their interpretation of biblical passages. THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD was described in the Tennessee Library Journal as an insightful and sensitive depiction of serpent handling believers. The explosive culminating scenes Edd Guy's church are astonishing descriptions of the bizarre ends to which true believers can be driven.