Debut author Jeff Zentner's The Serpent King is the mesmerizing story of three teenage misfits who band together in the Bible Belt town of Forrestville, Tenn.--a place Lydia Blankenship, for one, can't wait to escape when she graduates from high school. Lydia is a fashion-loving social-media maven who's bound for New York. Travis Bohannon's brutish father wishes he'd play football, but instead his sensitive son is obsessed with a fantasy series called Bloodfall, and is a sucker for anything with "the whiff of the firelit, ancient, and mysterious." Dillard (nicknamed Dill) Early--the grandson of the snake-obsessed "Serpent King" and son of a snake-handling preacher--is a talented singer-songwriter... and he's on edge.
Dill is so tense because he's living in the shadow of his imprisoned father. He's also secretly in love with Lydia, who is pushing him to go to college, while his mother wants him to drop out of school to earn money for the family. Dill's mother says, "You don't need options in life. You need Jesus. Options are fine if you've got them, but we don't." Told from a third-person point of view, this riveting novel takes turns zeroing in on each of the three friends. Pens would run dry if readers were to underline extraordinary sentences--the kind that are so true, or funny, or beautiful that they clamp hearts. The narrative swirls with the scent of shampoo, the stink of mold, warm evening winds, wood smoke, vultures turning in lazy circles. Zentner sings a song of deep pain and harsh reality, but also of fierce love and hope. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness