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San Francisco Chronicle - August 22, 2004 --
Saints at the River by Ron Rash -- HENRY HOLT; 256 PAGES $24 -- Leave
it to a novelist to examine the secrets and hidden motives bubbling to the
surface when an award-winning reporter chases after a story. The inevitable
and lasting influence of media coverage on events is just one of the many
underlying themes in Ron Rash's ambitious second novel, "Saints at the River".
At the start, an Easter-break picnic turns suddenly tragic when an
inquisitive 12-year-old daughter of well-to-do Minnesota parents wades into
the Tamassee River and drowns in the swift-running water...
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Atlanta Journal Constitution - August 12, 2004 --
Secrets lurk in 'Saints at the River'
By MICHAEL BISHOP -- Whether lakes, creeks or treacherous wilderness
rivers, poet and novelist Ron Rash has a piquant obsession with
water. The epigraph to his bleak but lovely poetry collection
"Raising the Dead" (2002) comes from Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part
1." It cites Glendower's boast, "I can call spirits from the vasty
deep," and Hotspur's retort, "Why, so can I, or so can any man. But
will they come when you do call for them?"...
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Entertainment Weekly - August 6, 2004 --
SAINTS AT THE RIVER, Ron Rash - Holt, $24 -- After 12-year-old Ruth
Kowalsky accidentally drowns in South Carolina’s Tamaasse River, she
becomes the epicenter of a small town power struggle in Rash’s
captivating second novel. Newspaper photographer Maggie Glenn
reluctantly rerturns to her sleepy hometown to cover the tragedy and
finds herself torn between Ruth’s parents, who want to dam the river
and salvage their daughter’s body, and her environmentally minded
neighbors, who want to...
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Southern Living -- August 2004 -- Saints at the
River by Ron Rash -- Henry Holt and Company -- A hydraulic--
water moving in a circular vortex-traps the body of a drowned girl
behind Wolf Cliff Falls on South Carolina’s Tamassee River.
Freeing the body is like” pulling someone out of the eye of a
tornado,” explains an Oconee County resident to an outsider. When
local drivers fail, the grieving parents bring in the inventor of a
temporary dam who claims he can retrieve the remains. This sparks
protests from...
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Wall Street Journal -- July 30, 2004 -- Bookmarks
-- SAINTS AT THE RIVER By Ron Rash -- When a young girl drowns
in South Carolina's Tamassee River and her body lodges under a stone
shelf that cannot be reached unless the river is dammed, a culture
war breaks out. On one side are the parents of the girl and a
developer who is eager to see the river tampered with for his own
reasons. On the other are a group of environmentalists and local
inhabitants who want to see such lovely surroundings remain as they
are. With "Saints at the River" (Holt, 237 pages, $24),
Ron Rash has done something wonderfully odd: He has written a
compelling novel that may be described...
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Publishers Weekly - July 12, 2004 -- Saints at the
River -- Rash, Ron -- ISBN: 0-80-507487-2 -- Henry Holt
& Company -- Hardcover $24.00, 2004/08 -- When the 12-year-old
daughter of a wealthy banker drowns in South Carolina's Tamassee
River, her death sets off an emotionally charged battle between the
grieving parents, who want to put up a dam to recover her body, and
the local environmentalists, who will risk everything to defend the
pristine state of their river. Rash pens his novel in clear,
unadorned prose appropriate to its ripped-from-the-headlines
premise; only the lyrical opening passage, which recounts the girl's
death, reflects his skill as a poet (Among the Believers; Raising
the Dead). But the book is rich with nuance...
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Library Journal - June 1, 2004 -- Rash
Ron - Saints at the River, Holt, Aug. 2004, c.256p. ISBN
0-8050-7487-2. $22 -- Like Rash’s debut, One Foot in Eden, his
second novel takes place in the Appalachian backwoods. A Minnesotan
girl vacationing in South Carolina with her parents accidentally
drowns in the Tamassee River, and her parents want to recover her
body which is trapped in an underwater gorge. This sparks a
confrontation between environmentalists, who are strongly opposed to
a rescue mission that would spoil the natural surroundings, and the
family, which lobbies for public support through the media...
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Kirkus Review - Starred Review, March 15, 2004 -- Saints
At The River, Henry Holt (256 pp), $22.00, August 6, 2004, ISBN
0-8050-7487-2 -- A gripping environmental drama pits the rescue of a
drowned girl against the integrity of a river. Narrator Maggie Glenn
works for a newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina. The 28-year-old
photographer was born and raised in Tamassee, in the mountains to
the west and she’s assigned, along with star reporter Allen
Hamphill, to cover a big story in her hometown. Three weeks earlier,
12-year-old Ruth Kowalsky had been sucked into a whirlpool into the
Tamassee river; county divers have failed to dislodge her body from
the rock where it lies trapped...
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