Right now, there are a handful of people in the American South who demonstrate their faith by brandishing poisonous snakes and drinking poison.

These people, called snake-handlers or sign-followers, are a tiny Pentecostal splinter group that exists more or less underground. They're the subject of Serpent Box (Harper Perennial), a fascinating, accomplished debut novel by American writer Vincent Louis Carrella.

Carrella treats his characters with extraordinary sympathy, and offers a window into the personal nature of faith.

Surprisingly, although this book is fairly long, there's not a lot of action here. Much of the plot focuses on two or three events, though I never felt that this novel dragged. In fact, when a major character is introduced towards the end and matters are wound up, I got the feeling Carrella realized that something had to happen.

Still, Serpent Box is one of those books which demonstrates, again, that sometimes fiction can tell a story more truthfully than "fact."

. . .

Christopher Dewdney's father was an archeologist with the Royal Ontario Museum. Perhaps that's how the well-regarded, much-published poet developed his keen interest in time, an interest he explores in Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time (Harper Collins).

The book is an amalgam of science and poetry, a follow-up to his volume of nocturnal reminiscences, Acquainted with the Night. Dewdney researches the foundry that manufactured the bricks used to construct his house, which leads to a tour of the long-abandoned factory and then to a meditation on the pre-historic world.

The author includes some physics - Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking make appearances - and observations of the world around him. Since Dewdney is a poet, the book is replete with images. My favourite is that of a van-load of tropical plants, destined for a winter sojourn in a greenhouse, "crowded in like refugees being evacuated before an invasion."

Dewdney also includes this great quotation from Hector Berlioz: "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."