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The Snakewoman of Little Egypt by Robert Hellenga
Written, smitten, and bitten with conflict
A Person, A Place, and an Object
It’s a common creative writing assignment. You pick a person from a list of possibilities. Then you choose a place and an object from other lists. You take those three things and create a story out of it.
I kept thinking about that as I read Robert Hellenga’s novel, The Snakewoman of Little Egypt. It almost sounds like the opening of a joke: “You’ve got an anthropologist, a rattlesnake, and the city of Paris. . . ”
If you have ophidiophobia, the abnormal fear of snakes, or herpetophobia, the fear of reptiles, you probably won’t even read this post. If you’re only slightly creeped out by snakes, you might, but you still might wonder why I chose to read this book. I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have if it had not been a book club assignment, chosen for these four reasons:
- The book takes place in our home state, Illinois.
- Much of the setting involves a small liberal arts college, and many of the group taught at the local community college or were former educators.
- The author, Robert Hellenga, taught English Literature at a college in Illinois and has been recognized by the…
