Rash, better known for his poetry, won the 2002 Novello Festival Press Literary Award for the manuscript of this compelling first novel. The plot combines a love triangle and a murder. From the beginning, you know who done it and, soon enough, why; the mystery is in the disappearance of Holland Winchester's body. Rash uses this plot device successfully by dividing the novel into five sections, narrated by the sheriff, the wife, the husband, the son, and the deputy. Each perspective reveals more about the characters and their motivations and actions while exploring themes of love, infidelity, revenge, justice, and fate. The conversations tell the thoughts and superstitions of various family members, neighbors, and the local witch to create the Appalachian South immediately after World War II. Beautiful writing -- it's easy to see he is a poet. This is a book I could reread just for the nuances of language. A quiet storm of a book.

This was one of my Book Club's picks with mixed reviews.

This is the review I read in Publishers Weekly Review: "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, mostly because Rash selects Maggie Glenn as his first-person narrator. A Tamassee native who now works as a news photographer in the state capital, Columbia, Maggie has deep ties to the town, but she's detached from the main fray. As a result, her news angles and her romantic attachments keep shifting. Maggie's rage against her father isn't sufficiently explored to carry the weight it bears in the plot, but Rash compensates for this weakness by creating detailed, highly particular characters. "