In the dark pinewoods about an hour outside of
Nashville, there are three teenagers about to graduate. They are all dreamers,
in their own way. Travis, a gentle giant who dreams of writing fantasy novels.
Lydia, who runs a fashion blog and dreams of going to school in New York. And
Dill Early Jr., who isn’t sure what his dreams are, just that they might
involve music and not getting left behind by his friends. Jeff Zentner’s debut
young adult novel The Serpent King is
a Southern Gothic masterpiece and a heartbreaking coming-of-age novel.
Dill is the son of a Pentecostal snake-handling
minister. When a scandal lands Dill’s father in jail, everyone in the town blames
Dill, including his own mother. It takes friends as loyal and brave as Lydia and
Travis to stand by his side and see his true worth. The Serpent King examines religion in all its multifaceted incarnations.
The characters that Zentner creates are vibrant and real; they feel like people
that the reader might actually know. The setting in this book is a live and breathing
entity as well. The South, for all its prejudices, is a place of beauty. This
story could not have taken place in any other location.
“Dill
thought for a second. He looked out at the river, at its eddies and swirls, the
patterns forming on its surface and disappearing. He listened to the ordered
chaos of its sounds. The moon ascended, Venus beside it. On the horizon below,
a radio tower rose into the indigo sky, its red lights blinking lazily. A warm
evening wind carried a breath of honeysuckle and linden from the banks. A train
whistled in the distance; it would soon rumble over them with sound like waking
up to a thunderstorm. He was a tuning fork, made to resonate at the frequency of
this place, at this time.”
Find yourself laughing, crying, and wanting to
reread this book over and over again, with Dill, Travis, and Lydia along for
the ride.
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| Jeff Zentner lives in Nashville, TN. |
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