Cover

ALSO BY RON RASH

NOVELS

One Foot in Eden

SHORT FICTION

The Night New Jesus Fell to Earth

Casualties

POETRY

Eureka Mill

Among the Believers

Raising the Dead

Halftitle

SAINTS AT THE RIVER

SAINTS

AT THE

RIVER

RON RASH

Dedication

For Ann

Front Matter

It need not blame the votary; but it may be able to
praise him only conditionally, as one who acts faithfully
according to his rights.

WILLIAM JAMES

“The Value of Saintliness”

Halftitle 1

SAINTS AT THE RIVER

Part One

She follows the river trail downstream, leaving behind her parents and younger brother who still eat their picnic lunch. She is twelve years old and it is her school’s Easter break. Her father has taken time off from his job and they have followed the Appalachian Mountains south, stopping first in Gatlinburg, then the Smokies, and finally this river. She finds a place above a falls where the water looks shallow and slow. The river is a boundary between South Carolina and Georgia, and she wants to wade into the middle and place one foot in South Carolina and one in Georgia so she can tell her friends back in Minnesota she has been in two states at the same time.