Saints at the River is Ron Rash’s first novel. Before the book’s appearance in 2004, Rash established a reputation as one of the most promising young voices in contemporary Appalachian literature as a poet and short story writer. In his poetry collections, Rash, a native of rural South Carolina, captured the beauty of the Carolina wilderness and, at the same time, investigated the challenges of preserving that wilderness in the new millennium. His award-winning short stories, published in a variety of prestigious literary journals and later in collections, explored the personalities and the psychologies of contemporary working-class Southern families often torn between the three-centuries-old traditions of the hill culture, most notably Christianity, and the challenges of the new millennium.

A critical success, Saints at the River drew comparisons to the Southern gothic narratives of Flannery O’Connor and to the lyric grace of Appalachian poet Wendell Berry. It appeared for several weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and won the Weatherford Award for Best Novel from the Appalachian Studies Association. Rash holds an endowed chair as Professor of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. Citations here are from the 2004 Picador paperback.

Plot Summary

Twelve-year-old Ruth Kowalsky is on a spring vacation with her parents and brother to western South Carolina’s rustic Tamassee River basin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She leaves her family’s picnic one evening and wades out into the rain-swollen river alone, where she drowns in the swirling eddies. Given the tricky natural landscape of the river, her body lodges somewhere underwater in the rocks beneath a waterfall, and squads from Oconee County cannot recover it. The only way to recover the girl’s body involves dynamiting the river and then erecting a temporary dam. Both operations would change the river’s natural integrity, which federal environmental law has protected for more than 40 years.

The increasingly acrimonious confrontations between the girl’s grieving parents and the staunch environmentalists determined to protect the river draws the attention of media outlets around the region. A Columbia (South Carolina) city newspaper dispatches Maggie Glenn, a twenty-something news photographer with family roots in Oconee County, and Allen Hemphill, a veteran journalist, to cover the story. Both Maggie and Allen deal with considerable emotional baggage. Maggie has not been home for nearly a decade. She is estranged from her father, whose carelessness when she was in her teens led to a catastrophic kitchen accident in which both she and her older brother, Ben, were badly burned. Allen is dealing with guilt, as his world-travel as a celebrated journalist cost him time away from his young wife and daughter. A year and half earlier, they were both killed in a car accident on their way to pick him up from an airport.

Over a single weekend, Allen and Maggie witness the tense showdown between the environmentalists and the grieving family. Factions in the town, interested in the long-term potential for developing a river currently protected by federal law, take an interest in the debate. Luke Miller, the uncompromising leader of the environmentalists, is an old flame of Maggie’s. Indeed, the long weekend forces Maggie revisit her past. She has an awkward reunion with her father, who is now dying of cancer. As both Maggie and Allen sort through complicated emotions (Allen cannot help but side with the family given the death of his own daughter), the two have an awkward romantic liaison.

When the story of the river hits the wire services, community directors face a public relations nightmare. They agree to have a temporary dam built, and engineers from Illinois assure the town that the dam can be erected, the girl recovered, and the dam removed within a single day.

The engineers struggle to erect the temporary dam against the river’s current. While the girl’s parents, most of the town, and the media watch, they slowly edge the dam into place. Randy Moseley, a local EMT rescuer, volunteers to dive and locate the girl’s body. Disaster ensues: the middle section of the temporary dam gives way and releases a torrent of water. Moseley is lost.

The next morning, the town gathers at the river for a memorial service. They’ve decided not to pursue any more rescue attempts until the river has receded. Before anyone can stop him, Randy’s brother, Ronny, pulls dynamite out of his knapsack and blows out the rocks under the falls, dislodging both dead bodies from the river.