Saints at the River

Rash is fascinated by the dynamics of change and by the inevitability of impermanence, and specifically, how his characters (and his Southern culture) handle living within a world constantly in flux. In just three days, for instance, both Maggie and Allen undergo tectonic changes in their emotional and psychological profile; both begin the narrative solitary and apart and both move toward a willingness to engage another. Under the pressure of her father’s approaching death, both Maggie and her father move away from a decade of estrangement and emotional distance to try to find their way to genuine communication. Indeed, the kitchen accident years earlier, an event no one could have anticipated, wrought devastating changes to the Glenn family. In addition, we watch as both the Kowalsky and Moseley families adjust to the impact of unexpected deaths, a pattern of profound emotional trauma reflected as well in Allen Hemphill’s struggle to cope with the accident that took his family.

Rash, however, offers a far wider sense of the implications of change than the psychological evolution of his principal characters. The South itself is changing. The culture of the rural Appalachian South, recreated in the music revue at the local barbeque and later in the memorial service at the river, are changing. As Maggie notes, the population of Tamassee is aging, and the younger generation opting to follow education opportunities and a 21st century job market that does not rely on agriculture. Families are breaking apart. The town itself edges toward obscurity; its residents bound more by memories than dreams. Without preaching and without insisting that time should somehow stand still, Rash introduces a cluster of forward-thinking developers without demonizing them. They see the opportunity to begin long-term plans to entirely redefine the natural landscape around the town as an avenue toward the region’s economic recovery. Indeed, despite its reassuring sense of permanence and sheer there-ness, the Appalachian wilderness itself as the novel closes begins to undergo transformation from wilderness to commodity. 

We begin the narrative as witnesses to the death of a child. Rash sees the reality of death as an element of human experience that both shapes and defines character. The experience of loss shapes all relationships in the novel, and each of the principal characters, in turn, is tested against how they handle that experience. Death can be unexpected, an accident that intrudes irrevocably on what otherwise was a normal and uneventful day. A young girl stumbles in a spring-fed river; a driver slides across the median during a heavy rain; a rescue worker is swamped by the force of a river. Death can be far less dramatic, like cancer eroding slowly through a body.

For most of the town, itself long rooted in the Christian traditions, death is a translation into a higher reality. It’s a glorious and mysterious transition of the soul into an afterlife. The promise of resurrection animates the memorial service at the river. Of course, Rash is not so sure. Even as the congregation celebrates the promise of resurrection, the river finally releases the very dead (and decomposing) bodies of both Ruth and Randy, a gruesome literal resurrection that horrifies the congregation.

Without the reassuring language and radiant metaphors of Christianity, characters struggle to handle the experience of death. Ruth’s parents, although nominally Christian, cannot draw their strength from that transcendent faith. They are parents who cannot rest until the body of their daughter is reclaimed from river. For his part, Allen collapses in the traumatic aftermath of the deaths of his wife and daughter. He withdraws from engaging life, his vulnerability exposed. His retreat into guilt and regret signals a surrender, counterproductive and ultimately dead-end, to the fear of mortality.

In the end, it is Maggie who best comes to terms with the experience of death. When her mother got sick, she was able to escape the responsibility by going off to college. In the narrative present, she initially turns down her brother’s plea to help care for her father. In the experience of the dead girl in the river, however, she comes to embrace the reality that the father she has struggled to love is dying. That is her moment of emotional resurrection, suggested by the recurring dream of her emerging from murky river water. In his closing months, Maggie stops retreating. Death becomes a reality. She accepts the responsibility of caring for her father. That, for Rash, is perhaps the noblest gesture any of us can offer in the face of loss: tender support and quiet care for each other.