40 pages • 1 hour read
Saints at the River
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Part 1, PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Part 1, Prologue Summary
In the brief Prologue (set apart by italics), we meet Ruth Kowalsky. Like many 12-year-olds, she is curious, open to adventure, and unburdened by considerations of risk. It is spring in the Appalachian foothills on the South Carolina/Georgia border country in Oconee County. Her family, her parents and her brother, are taking a long overdue vacation from Minnesota by visiting Appalachian tourist spots.
One evening at sunset, Ruth wanders off from her family’s picnic and ventures to the banks of the Tamassee River. She is intrigued by the idea that the boundary between the two states runs through the middle of the river—she just wants to stand in two states at the same time. Barefoot, she steps into the cold river and moves into its rapid current. She is a Red Cross certified swimmer, but she stumbles and slips under the water and feels the river pulling her. She tumbles helplessly in the black depths of the river, suddenly aware of the danger she is in. Her head glances off a rock; breathing becomes difficult; her lungs feel like they will explode. Then “her arms and legs she did not even know were flailing cease and she becomes part of the river” (5). She drowns.
Part 1, Prologue Analysis
There short Prologue distances the reader. Rash wants us to observe Ruth Kowalsky’s dilemma without personal interest. He maintains that safe distance by using italics. The Prologue warns us to stand back and watch an accident we cannot prevent.
The Prologue begins innocently enough. A nameless child, curious about a river, slips off her sandals to wade into it. It would appear the picture of Romantic idealism: a child in the loving arms of Mother Nature. As the girl gingerly picks her way along the muddy bottom of the river, however, we begin to sense what she herself cannot, so confident is she in her abilities as a certified swimmer. By not introducing any authorial overview, by not warning us outright that the river is rushing too fast, we realize what the child realizes too late: she is in real danger, and the river does not care.
The swift pull of the river once the girl stumbles against the rocks and then the quick powerful pull of the river’s hydraulics, a whirlpool effect much like an ocean’s riptide, are mirrored in sentences that quickly degenerate into freefall. Sentences break from traditional structure, and punctuation is gone as we whirl headlong into the girl’s narrative.
The Prologue’s closing line sets up the novel’s thematic dilemma: Rash does not say the girl died and instead writes that she became part of the river, a kind of homecoming. For Rash, the girl returns to her essence, the river as both a terrifying and evil force and a welcoming and reassuring energy. His choice foreshadows Maggie’s return to Tamassee, which begins in the next chapter.
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