Saints at the River

Analyze the effects and the impact of a first-person female narrator created by a male author. Does it matter? Does the formal technique of crossing gender to tell the story work with the narrative’s larger themes? Would a male narrator have the same impact?

Discuss the novel’s different interpretations of the concept of resurrection.

Research the definition of nature from the perceptions of three different established schools of American literature, each an element of Rash’s story: Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Naturalism.

Rash is careful to balance the presentation of characters on both sides of the emotional issue that divides the small Appalachian river town, like politicians, businesspeople, developers, river rescue teams, engineers, environmentalists, locals, out of towners. Take representative characters of each and show how Rash avoids making them into two-dimensional characters and why that is a critical element of his environmental story.

The novel’s epigraph comes from the writings of American philosopher William James, whose writings explored the nature of religious conviction in a secular society. James discusses the role of saints in a world that resists that level of religious commitment. Where are our saints now? How does Rash use the idea of religion and religious conviction to create his picture of the Appalachian South?

Compare and contrast Luke Miller and Randy Moseley as advocates of the river. Who do you think is more heroic and why? 

The novel breaks Maggie’s first-person narration once: The Prologue to Part One, when we follow Ruth Kowalsky into the river and then quickly to her death. Analyze the Prologue. What is gained by it? How does the sentence structure actually mimic the swirling river and the girl’s rising panic? Why is this not told from the first-person perspective of Ruth?

Allen and Maggie are both haunted by ghosts. Define how Rash uses the metaphor of ghosts to suggest how they both handle—or mishandle—their pasts.