Saints at the River : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: "Ghosts, I told myself, more ghosts"
Review: 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.






Rating:
Summary: Nice Followup
Review: In Saints at the River, Ron Rash returns to the same general region as his much acclaimed first novel, One Foot in Eden. But this novel has a contemporary setting and is more conventional than his previous offering. While the author does manage to deliver multiple viewpoints on an extremely complicated environmental issue, he does so through the eyes of a single narrator. There is a love interest and some characters that might seem like the stock variety if you're not from this area.

Most of the power in this story is generated not by the emotional conflict of its characters, but by the author's ability to frame the simplistic with startlingly accurate, poetic imagery. Sure there are symbolic elements like the river as death, the human as the transitory beast that yearns for purpose, but what holds it all together is the prose style of a man who is certainly one of our finest poets.

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Summary: Just the way it is ....
Review: 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.

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Summary: not just for Southern readers
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Characters and attitudes are real...
Review: This novel is centered in the area where I grew up. The characters and attitudes Ron Rash brings forth in this novel are accurate and made me smile because I know/knew people exactly like the ones populating the novel.

I bought this novel on a recent return trip to Oconee (much like the narato but for a different purpose). Wnet to a book store in Seneca and asked for a good regional writer. Rin Rash was recommended. I looked at the book and thought it looked simple and too short to be legitimate. In additiona, I'd never heard of Ron Rash. But I recalled a true event where a little girl's body was trapped in the river. So I bought it.

It was excellent (I gave 4 stars because I'm a harsh judge -- see my other reviews to get calibrated. My other reviews are under this moniker and the DeepNavel alias.)

There are a few issues withthe book which I suspect Ron Rash did on purpose to avoid a lawsuit: the names are probably changed (I didn't verify), the Tammassee river is closer to a creek so I suspect he's really talking about the Chattooga river, and the character Luke seemed too intellectual for the environmentalists I've met and there's plenty of them here in Colorado. Also, I don't recall being able to see Sasafras mountain from so many angles.

Also, he said at one point the "when toads grow wings" is a common saying from that region. I'd never heard it till he wrote it so it wasn't too common.

The book was particularly poignant because I moved away from the region much like the narrator and have similar feelings when I return.

If you are from that region of the country, this book is highly recommended. Ron Rash probably writes eloquently things you've thought from time to time. If you're not from that area, it's still a good read.