Fiction. Winner of the 2007 Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest Selected by Steve Lattimore. SNAKETOWN tells of a place that captivates and holds hostage, a place hermitic and congenital like the families that populate it. It tells the story of heredity and tragedy; how evil can magnetize as mightily as beauty, how a family, nostalgic for past times--devastating times--can revise damaging, damning memory; how the familiar should never be trusted.