By David Hammond
Solstice Publishing, 2024
Paperback: $22.00
Genre: Science Fiction
Reviewed by Edward Journey
The first thing you should know is that Fyffe, Alabama, atop Sand Mountain, was the site of more than fifty possible UFO sightings over two days in February 1989. Pilgrims interested in “Unexplained Aerial Phenomena” (UAPs), the newest name for UFOs, still arrive in the town on the anniversaries in hopes of seeing something. This is the factual context for a new novel, Welcome to Sand Mountain, by David Hammond.
Hammond has assembled a spicy mix of characters representing the extremes of redneckery, cultism, snake-handling holy rollers, small-town pols, federal law enforcement, and robotic yellowjackets. The calm center of this mix is Sheriff J.T. McLemore and his salt-of-the-Earth family. McLemore is dealing with the convergence of these characters in Fyffe for the 30th UFO anniversary, as well as the advent of a 500-year winter blizzard. The sheriff has an itch he cannot explain. Or, perhaps he can, but prefers not to.
Welcome to Sand Mountain starts slowly as Hammond introduces and fleshes out the myriad players. Coke Ragsdale, a local ne’er-do-well, awakens McLemore during the blizzard to report that his truck and brother, Charlie, have been abducted by aliens. The Harpazo, a California-based collection of “zealots – but not religious zealots,” is traveling to Fyffe so that they might be taken away from a dying planet Earth by the “Heavenly Transporters.” Harpazo’s leader, The Prophet, is a charismatic nutcase, a former college professor, and “a conduit for alien space travelers” with an irritating fondness for quoting Shakespeare; he renames his followers after Shakespearean characters.
The media, of course, arrive en masse. Two separate FBI divisions – one follows cults and the other investigates UAPs – have a more than passing interest in the goings-on in Fyffe. Over on Lookout Mountain, Billy Youngblood, pastor of a snake-handling flock at God’s Church with the Power to Tread, convinces his somewhat hesitant male congregants to go after the “blasphemin’ sissy…idolators.” Despite some snake handlers’ reservations, “good sense [gives] way to peer pressure.” Meanwhile, Sheriff McLemore’s dynamic with Fyffe’s Mayor Lester Norris is reminiscent of the interaction between Chief Brody and Mayor Vaughn in Jaws – or even Sheriff Andy Taylor and Mayor Pike in Mayberry.
There are humorous distractions and plot extremes throughout Welcome to Sand Mountain, but there are also vivid, terrifying, and wrenching plot developments. Any traveler along US Highway 72 in northeast Alabama who has been interested in TVA’s spooky, hulking, and unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant beside the Tennessee River will be further intrigued by paranoid conjectures posited in Hammond’s book. Hammond may have fun with some of his characterizations but does not treat the possibility of extraterrestrials as a joke. Welcome to Sand Mountain is a suspenseful romp with vivid and broadly drawn characters that takes place in a part of Alabama that remains a mystery to many. The book should appeal to those who are UFO/UAP-curious.
Edward Journey, a retired university professor and theatre professional living in Birmingham, regularly shares his essays in the online journal “Professional Southerner” (www.professionalsoutherner.com).
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.