Ginger Pinholster’s SNAKES OF ST. AUGUSTINE opens with a robbery at the serpentarium in St. Augustine, Florida. Three prized snakes gentle enough for children to handle have been stolen, and Officer Fletch Jefferies is told that the culprit is the serpentarium-owner’s foster sister, Chelsea. The more dominant narrative however starts in the second chapter, in which Serena Jacobs and Rahkendra “Rocky” Wright are searching for the former’s much-younger brother and the latter’s boyfriend: Gethin. Twenty-eight years old and described as someone who has been diagnosed with a variety of disorders, ranging from ADHD to OCD to what one doctor called “Autism Light,” Gethin Jacobs is a snake-lover who has apparently run away as a result of Rocky’s insistence that he choose between her and his slithery pets (she claims to be allergic). Driving around in vain, Serena and Rocky accidentally hit someone who reminds them of him: Jaswinder “Jazz” McGinness. He’s homeless but handsome, and once the two women help Jazz into their car and give him some medical aid in their house (he says he can’t afford the hospital bill), a quirky romance sparks between him and Serena.
The (sort of) accident serves as a larger statement about Jazz, who we learn has Bipolar I disorder: he is much less a danger to others than he is to himself. By extension the book’s harmless yet socially-unaccepted snakes become metaphors for all the misunderstood souls like Jazz and Gethin: they may appear dangerous to some people, but the vast majority mean no harm. Pinholster writes from several different characters’ perspectives in a close third-person, and the chapters about Jazz and Gethin skillfully convey how someone who is well-meaning but off their medication perceives the world. Sometimes it’s poetic: “Walking the narrow trail, careful to keep his feet inside the lantern’s circle, his life seemed to have been reduced to its most essential elements—condensed—strengthened into a single, potent mass of light around his feet.”
Rocky and Serena get plenty of chapters, too, essentially making these female characters the voices of reason. Serena gets by as a fitness trainer and social media presence who gets recognized on the street regularly, while Rocky is a young waitress who has to put up with racist remarks and sexual harassment in order to pay her way through school. This novel does a commendable job of depicting these everyday, usually-public situations that often get prolonged—regardless of whether Rocky is being followed on the street or needs to return to the same obnoxious table again and again throughout her shift.
SNAKES OF ST. AUGUSTINE is not without its faults, however. Despite many vivid analogies (“Her hard, slightly green eyes and ruddy complexion made him think of two peas in a bowl of tomato soup”), some others are unsuccessful: “Her knees, at sixty, felt like a pair of lizards trying to claw their way to freedom.” Another compares a man’s posture to a question mark simply because he “put his hands in his pockets and pulled his shoulders up to his ears.” Moreover, Jazz’s role as a Christ-like figure is not very subtle—from the stigmata marks to the prayer imagery to him proclaiming “I am the light and the way”—and his romance with Serena follows a predictable path. There are some melodramatic scenes that show the writer’s hand as well, and the plot is fairly simple for one that seems partly inspired by mysteries and crime novels. Nevertheless, its complicated characters, humor, empathy, small amount of typos, and depiction of how good people respond to difficult circumstances hoist this tragic book above its flaws. Snake-lover or no, the reader comes away with a compelling take on mental health crises, patience, and love.
Ginger Pinholster’s SNAKES OF ST. AUGUSTINE boasts memorable characters, good pacing, and a warm heart that makes the novel’s darker insights easier to absorb but no less significant.
~J.S. Gornael for IndieReader