Customer Reviews

Saints at the River: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

SAINTS AT THE RIVER is the second novel by Ron Rash. The action of the plot concerns the death of a young girl in the Tamassee River, which is located in Oconee County, SC and protected by federal law. The girl's body becomes trapped in the dangerous river and the small community around the river becomes a flashpoint for a confrontation between environmentalists and the grieving parents.

Maggie, a newspaper photographer, returns to the town where she grew up to cover the story. She soon becomes entangled in old relationships with her dying father (towards whom she feels much unresolved anger) and the brooding Luke (an ex-lover and militant environmentalist). To oversimplify, this novel is sort of a "You can't go home again or can you" story. Maggie's attitude towards her family and the river evolves over the course of the novel and Rash wisely leaves her conflicting web of emotions unresolved after her photograph of the grieving father changes the course of the story.

I highly recommend this book with its economically drawn yet vivid characters and love of place. Rash's men tend to be too sensitive by half, but that's a minor distraction. Ron Rash is a name all readers of new fiction should watch for.

Never a wasted word in the prose of poet Ron Rash, who sets the reader down at the heart of this deeply-connected Southern mountain community -- at the riverside, in the midst of a double tragedy and an environmental fight that no outsider is going to win. One wishes he had told us more, through his expatriate female narrator, about why she had put so many miles between her current life and this idyllic country and her own good people, but he's never going to tell too much about anything. Mr. Rash is mountain to the core,a spare and totally authentic voice, and that's just the way it is.

This was a really good book. I must admit that I didn't like it as much as his first novel, 'One Foot In Eden', but it was good nonetheless. As I read this story I kept asking myself whose side I would be on, and just when I thought my mind was made up, the other side made a very good point, and a very sad one.

12 year-old Ruth Kowalsky drowned in the Tamassee River during a family outing, a river that is protected by the Wild and Scenic River Act. This means that nothing can be done to this river to change or alter it in ANY way. Mr. and Mrs. Kowalsky want to retrieve their daughter's body, but because it lies in a dangerous part of the river known as a hydraulic, divers can't simply go in and get it. A temporary dam needs to be built to get her out. And this dam violates the Scenic River Act.

Maggie, a photographer from the area who now lives in Columbia, has been sent to her hometown with reporter Allen Hemphill to cover the growing problem. The town and the parents are at odds when it comes to retrieving Ruth. The town says no, she belongs to the river now, and are not willing to break the law to get her out, while the parents just want their daughters body so they can give her a proper burial back home. Seems pretty cut and dry huh? I had no doubt who's side I was on at the beginning of this book. But by the end my opinion had changed.

Mr. Rash is an exceptional writer. He makes you feel like you're right there on that river with everyone else. He makes everyone involved feel so real, like they're distant relatives of ours. Just as I recommended his first book, I absolutely recommend this one as well. Mr. Rash is a very talented author who definitely should not be missed. I can't wait for his next novel.

Saints at the River addresses a common problem encountered by a country with a diminishing wilderness, but it is tragedy with a human face that turns the tide, making legal decisions all the more difficult: protect the land as dictated by law or make exemptions for deserving humans who are suffering. The Tamassee River is protected by environmental law as a Wild and Scenic River in South Carolina, one of the few pristine waterways kept out of the reach of developers, but it is a long, bitter struggle by the residents to achieve such protective status for the river.

However, when a young girl falls drowns near the falls, her body tapped by the hydraulic intensity of the churning water, her parents are distraught. They cannot recover the body. Five weeks later, with media gathered to witness the proceedings, meetings are held to determine whether a temporary dam can divert the water long enough to free the body. A critical factor in the debate is the grieving mother, whose religious conviction is that her daughter's body must be reunited with her soul for burial. This mother's anguish is powerful and moving to the onlookers, her subdued mien all but drowning out the eloquent arguments of a local environmentalist, who says the river has claimed the girl and that she should be left in peace, part of the terrible harmony of nature.

Maggie Glenn, a former resident of Oconee County in the Appalachia's, is now a photojournalist in Colombia, South Carolina. Sent by her newspaper with award-winning journalist Allen Hemphill to cover the story, Maggie is forced to relive her personal demons and long antipathy to a father who is dying of cancer. Maggie shoots a stunning photo that does much to sway public opinion on the side of the drowned girl's parents and the temporary dam, but she has second thoughts when the people she grew up with react to her perceived betrayal. Sorting through her mixed reactions, Maggie develops feelings for Hemphill, their new relationship charged with conflicting sentiments each has about the river controversy. But Maggie is not ready to make her peace with the past. It will take the unfolding drama surrounding the drowning to wake the young woman to reconciliation of past with present.

This simple story constructs an ever-more common issue, the protection and conservancy of natural assets and all that entails. Clearly, when a sentimental twist is added, it is natural for the public to demand exception to the law to alleviate the suffering of victims. Often such exceptions precipitate the destruction of the protected region. Rash outlines the controversy with an unbiased eye in thoughtful prose, giving equal weight to both sides, illustrating the psychological nuances that color such decisions. But the river moves on inexorably, carrying its dead forever in its watery embrace, nature's voice often overridden by the cacophony of human need. Luan Gaines/2005.

Seldom does a book make me choke up or shed a tear, but SAINTS AT THE RIVER was able to affect me emotionally as few other books in my life ever have. Perhaps it's because this story is from the south and after leaving the south a few years ago, I am often brought to tears when thinking about it because I miss it so much. Perhaps it's the lyrical way Mr. Rash has told this beautifully eerie story of the south that captured my heart. Perhaps it's the story itself, the death of a child in the first few pages that brought the tears. You be the judge. As I pack the book up and send it to my son, as I recommend it to a friend who I think might feel and appreciate what I did when I read it, I will again and again feel extremely lucky to have found it. As you read this you will find lines that are meant to touch you and do, that pull you into the middle of what everyone is living and feeling and dealing with in their own unique and personal ways. Don't pass this up.

Encompassing multiple viewpoints, Saints at the River, is a poetic and subtle account of a small town faced with a moral crisis. The novel centers on the accidental drowning of Ruth Kowalsky, a 12-year old girl. When her body becomes trapped in a deep eddy, the small community of Tamassee, South Carolina is divided. The girl's family wants to fish her body out at any cost, even if it means hiring a company from their home state of Illinois to build a temporary dam. Meanwhile, an invigorated group of environmentalists, lead by the charismatic Luke Miller, is set to preserve the river's integrity at any cost. Luke is strongly opposed to a rescue mission that would spoil the natural surroundings - the river makes him feel as though he is in the presence of "something sacred and eternal." But the family of the dead girl lobbies for public and political support through the local media. Maggie Glenn, the main protagonist who comes to photograph the proceedings, has grown up in Tamassee and was once Luke's lover. She's torn when she's forced to confront her small-town baggage while covering the community debates as an outsider.

Narrated by Maggie, the novel is an astute and delicate account of how the small community must decide between preserving the beauty of the river, yet honoring the wishes of the family of the dead girl. Saints at the River, is like a moral eco-play, as Rash, slowly and mellifluously presents the different points of view: A father who's lost his daughter to a river and can't accept it, a business man getting free national advertising for his product, environmentalist who is blind-sided, and a developer using this incident to weaken environmental regulations.

Luke wants the dead girl to stay in the river and "to be part of something pure, good, and unchanging, the closest thing to Eden we've got left." But the locals - told from the point of view of Maggie's dying father - resent the environmentalists coming up here and telling them how to do things, "everything from what trees we can cut, to whether a man can pull a trailer on his own land." Maggie has her own demons to confront. Her father is racked with guilt and pain, and feels responsible for a terrible accident that happened when Maggie was a little girl. She must face her father, as her father and her have given "voice to every spiteful, hateful thought their hearts had held for each other." And she feels as though she's grown up in a place where mountains "shut people in, keep everything turned inward, buffering them from everything else." While trying to understand and reconcile with Dad, Maggie becomes romantically involved with Allen Hemphill, a high-profile reporter, who lost his daughter and wife in a terrible automobile accident.

Rash has peppered the narrative with down-to-earth characters: Maggie observes that the kids she has grown up with have their own kids now, "with their blue-collar jobs, and mortgages." And the rich descriptions of the area have an honesty and a poetic freshness: "the light hatches of dun-colored caddis flies dimpled some pools." Mr. Rash tells a nuanced, empathetic, and compassionate story - one that provides a vehicle for all points of view. Mike Leonard August 04.

Yesterday I finished reading Ron Rash's Saints At The River. It was recommended by a friend of mine who used to be a river guide on the Tamassee River which serves as the heart of the story. What's interesting is that Rash has written a book which presents his readers, most which I would assume are pro-Green, a dilemma not so easy to resolve with platform rhetoric.

Saints At The River tells the story of a family's attempt to reclaim his daughter's body from the river in which she drowned. It is the story of an environmentalist trying to enforce the Tamassee's designation as a Wild and Scenic River and therefore not allow the portable dam to be built which would have to be done to recover the girl's body.

The story is told through the eyes a Maggie Glenn, an attractive (we must assume she is attractive because of all the descriptions of her blue eyes and the cut off jeans she used to wear) newspaper photographer who works for a paper in Columbia but is originally from closed in, mountainous Oconee County where the story take place. She and Allen Hemphill, a Pulitzer Prize nominee who now works at her paper, are sent to cover the debate over erecting a small portable dam to deflect the flow from over the waterfall which forms the hydraulic where the girl's body is trapped. The main character against setting up the dam is Luke, an ardent environmentalist and lover of the river and, oh by the way (just to make things interesting) Maggie's first lover. There is also the ensemble cast of stock characters: the developer, the small town sheriff, the good ol' boys, even a cheesy boss who is one of the most perfectly described characters in the novel.

Rash reveals the story through straightforward prose that one will definitely consider good writing even if it makes no great strides in literary style. At times, especially when describing the face of the river at different times of the year, Rash's writing does take on a poetic quality that is similar to James Dickey's descriptive writing in Deliverance and those are the moments when the reader can bond with the river rather than just turning the page to find out what Maggie is doing. But Saints At The River is a page turner all the way up to its unanticipated ending. It asks the reader if personal convictions should be upheld at all costs, and quite literally, what is the cost of burying the dead.

"Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever
That flows by the throne of God?

Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of the Lord."

The words of that old hymn have always haunted me, maybe because a large portion of my childhood was spent on the banks of a beautiful river, tucked up in the mountains, where I felt God and the angels walking with me. When I first saw this book on the shelf, I knew immediately where Ron Rash got his title and the whole time I was reading this book, the song would filter through my mind. Oddly enough, I finished the book while up in Rabun County, Georgia, across the wild and scenic Chattooga River from Oconee (it may be Occonee-- I have to double check) County, South Carolina, where the book takes place.

This is not an easy book to read. The opening scene is the death of a twelve-year-old girl, who drowns in the Tamassee River and her body is trapped in a deep eddy, impossible to recover by the usual means. The small town that perches at the riverside is soon forced into the national spotlight as a conflict arises between the girls parents, who want her body recovered, and environmentalists who want to protect the river from the permanent damage rescue attempts will cause, and prevent future damage to a river which, after a long and hard fight, bears the protection of federal preservation. Throw into this Maggie Glenn, a photographer from a Columbia SC newspaper, who grew up in the area (and has demons from her own past to fight). Maggie was involved in the battle that helped the river earn its "wild and scenic" status, and in this story, finds herself documenting the drama of the river, observing the people she grew up with, and face to face with a father she had a falling out with years before.

Like I said, it's not an easy read, or it wasn't for me, because of the conflicts between the two camps-- those that want to help the family come to closure and bury their daughter so they can begin to heal, and those that want to protect a spot on earth from further damage from mankind. I know which group I'd be in, but I came to understand a bit more the viewpoints of the other. I like a book that makes you dig in and explore your own deep eddies and currents. And I like a book that allows me to gather at the river, with the saints and the angels, once again.

Did I mention this was based on a true story?

I enjoy Rash's poetry and prose, and was very excited to read this particular novel. Text at the beginning of the book disclaims any connections with actual events or persons, but most anyone who lives in the southern Appalachia knows the story Rash is telling - from the partial description of Raven's Chute, to the gruesome details of dismemberment in a recovery at left crack. I think Rash is fantastic, but I'm wondering where/when the decision to cross the line blurring fiction and nonfiction is made or can be made.

Rash is not only a storyteller but a poet; therefore, this book cannot be read quickly to capture the intriguing plot but needs to be savored for the language, its imagery, and its cadence. The only thing that baffled me was trying to make sense of the ages of the characters. The story is taking place in the 2000's because of the allusion to the confederate flag issue in SC and Maggie is said to be about 30. Allen makes reference to being in Vietnam before he was in Rwanda, so that would put him in his 50's, right? Way too much age difference in the two to not make an issue of it. Then, Luke and his band of hippie bra-burners sound straight out of the 1970's for Maggie to have met him 8 years earlier at Clemson. Still a great book!