In the House of the Serpent Handler: A Story of Faith and Fleeting Fame in the Age of Social Media

In the House of the Serpent Handler offers an intimate and engrossing look at the latest generation of Pentecostal believers who “take up” venomous snakes as a test of their religious faith. Focusing on several preachers and their families in six Appalachian states, journalist Julia C. Duin explores the impact that such twenty-first-century phenomena as social media and “reality television” have had on rituals long practiced in obscurity.

As Duin reveals, the mortal snakebite suffered by pas...