Sunday's Silence

From the author of the mesmerising MOONLIGHT ON THE AVENUE OF FAITH, long-listed for the Orange Prize, comes an unforgettable story about religious fervour and extreme love The haunting story of Blue, married at fourteen to a professor twenty-seven years her senior, she enters the society of the Holiness Serpent Handlers of Appalachia, a society of religious extremes and cruelty, of mystery and faith. A society where people spend their free-time searching for large, poisonous snakes to dance with at their religious meetings. Over the years, Blue becomes a High Priestess of the Serpent Handlers, frightened of nothing, she desperately risks her life by drinking poison and handling the most poisonous of the snakes in the hope that she might find peace she craves.