A young seminary graduate is sent to investigate strange goings-on at a church in the mountains of Tennessee in the summer of 1920, while in Nashville, Women's Suffrage comes to a final vote...

“Less the Horror Than the Grace blends rich historical detail with an undercurrent of suspense and emotional depth. I was lost in these characters’ lives as they wrestle with faith, power, and identity in ways that will stay with me for awhile. An important book.” – Angela Yuriko Smith, Bram Stoker Award–winning author

It’s summer and the hollers of Tennessee are dripping with humidity and tension, the electricity in the air broken only by storms and, if you’re lucky, a travelling revival. The most famous features a lady preacher—who bestows the power on her listeners to handle the most venomous snakes without fear, investing them with a spiritual power they’ve never known.

Seminary graduate Theo Hood arrives in time to attend the funeral of the pastor he was supposed to observe—who was killed by a snake bite. Theo can’t help but notice a strange pall over the town. He finds an unexpected kinship with Minerva, the pastor, who seems to have unusual powers.

Theo fights to find out what’s really going on, is allowed into the fellowship of women and nearly dies for it, before finding an unexpected ally as the legislators ready to vote for women’s suffrage face what Theo knows to be a supernatural battle.

A feminist retelling of the Medusa myth set in a snake-handling church in Tennessee in the summer of 1920 as the women’s suffrage comes to a vote for the entire United States

"Yet it is less the horror than the grace...Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone."

—On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery by Percy Bysshe Shelley