Snakewoman of Little Egypt

Jackson Jones, a 40-year-old anthropology professor in Illinois, is recovering from Lyme disease and awaiting the arrival of his late hired hand's niece, who is moving into her uncle's garage apartment. Willa Fern (who presciently renames herself Sunny) found six years of prison preferable to her nightmarish marriage to Earl, the husband she shot for forcing her to put her hand in a box of rattlesnakes. As pastor of the Church of the Burning Bush with Signs Following, Earl believes with his followers in the wildly dangerous practice of religious snake handling, and the local police generally look the other way. As the inevitable romance between Sunny and Jackson heats up, they become more and more immersed in each other's lives. Sunny enrolls in college and thrives, while Jackson, who did fieldwork in the Congo and fathered a child there, is befriended by Earl and begins an anthropological study of Sunny's ex-church with shocking results.