The Serpent and the Hummingbird, tells the story of six people whose lives become entwined in a complex mixture of fear, love, violence and bizarre religious practices, as they struggle with matters of belief, reflecting the confusions, the threats, and promises of deeply held faith central to our current political, social, and economic dialogues. The story deals with these issues in a timely fashion, and is peopled with fully realized characters who live in a world close to our own, but bizarre enough to approach the grotesque that Flannery O'Connor said was necessary to shock readers into a realization of the misshapen nature of our times.