What I am and am not reading this summer

Three things I am reading this summer:

Glorybound, by Jessie van Eerden. I have never met a snake-handling, foot-washing West Virginian before, but everything in this delightful and complex portrait of a family in economically depressed coal country is utterly convincing.

Glorybound is a sensitively told love story in which the characters continually surprise. Two young women who believe they are prophets, their imprisoned father, a VISTA volunteer who arrives in their town to teach English, a visiting snake handler—at each turn they grow richer and stranger, but also more believable. Their religious beliefs are layered with human action and intuition.