In an exploration of the influences that bind us to people and place, to conviction and dream, Cathy Rigg’s That Which Binds Us makes a tumultuous journey from 1854 to 1866. Set in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and told from the perspective of five first-person characters, the novel rings with intimacy and authenticity, deftly pulling a reader into a vivid nineteenth-century world.
Throughout the novel, the ties which bind reveal their power. Devotion to family and place is a pivotal theme. So is allegiance to integrity. To justice. To friend.
Most compelling in her struggle is Elizabeth Young, who goes also by “Tess.” She yearns to leave her rural home and experience life far beyond the ridges that constrain her view. Her dream is thwarted by three things: her love for Ben Grubb, the disability and eventual death of her father, and the onset of war.
Ben Grubb tells his story through letters he writes when pulled away by the Civil War. His experience in uniform sobers and expands him into the man, namely his late father, he never expected to live up to.
Another narrator is Patrick Hagan, an Irish immigrant who has lost to starvation and other calamities the family he left behind. Instead of succumbing to bitterness, he expresses resolute gratitude for the blessings of affluence and education his uncle has provided. He becomes an attorney with a noble heart.
Fourth is Mary Lenore Kitchens, who goes by “Marilee.” Graced with education and intelligence, she is the grown, only-child daughter of a college professor and his “socialite” wife. She has come to the rugged hills to teach:
“I came to these mountains to build a life of purpose—one in which my childhood of privilege might extend a world of possibility to the children of this remote and isolated land. They are born deserving even if their geography, as well as their circumstance, harbors certain inherent limits.”
Marilee’s most promising pupil is Elizabeth Young, who matures into a fast friend.
The fifth voice is that of Red Hopkins, the keeper of secrets. He hovers over the others like an all-seeing and benevolent angel, tormented and constrained by his Freemason vows of silence.
These five characters sequentially appear and reappear in a tale of loyalty, courage, heartache, and redemption as each is transformed not only by the unspeakable suffering and sorrow imposed by a brutal war, but by each one’s private demons.
Elizabeth chooses loyalty to her family and to Ben, thereby abandoning her dream of leaving the mountains. Ben gives up his philandering ways to become a Freemason and a devoted husband. Patrick stifles his heart-rending feelings of love for the sake of another’s happiness. Marilee gives up her pursuit of the man she loves, instead teaching the children of freed slaves and assisting the Underground Railroad. And Red ultimately decides to break his promise of silence to divulge the secrets only he can share.
Both Patrick and Marilee use their elevated statuses to serve their instincts to help, giving the impression only the privileged few can enact real change. Elizabeth rejects that notion, stepping forward to help war widows. And, as is so often the case, these three heartbroken people help themselves by helping others.
But let not this reviewer paint too rosy a glow on a story rife with harsh and poignant realities. It begins, after all, with the hanging of Elizabeth’s beloved uncle, Ruck. It details the brutalities of war and the bleakness of despair.
Artful prose carries the tale to a satisfying conclusion without compromising its blunt-force impact. Unanswered questions, such as the full explanation of Uncle Ruck’s fate or how Ben learned of his father-in-law’s death and managed to get to the distant funeral in time, are easily forgotten as one encounters passages such as these:
He was astride Buck, and him and the colt stood crossways over the trail. They looked to be one, all shadow and outline, a big round sun lowering behind them as the sky pushed a fire of orange through the trees. I pulled my horse to a stop.
Red rode up beside me.
“I need to talk to you, Tess.” Ben’s voice traveled sure and strong over the rocky path, flood waters clearing an overgrown ravine.
And,
So much of Scott County is fierce, all stark ridges and deep hardwood forests. But around here the land is gentle—friendly, even—with hills that rise and fall like the chest of a man laying in peaceful sleep. The fields spread out broad and easy, the colors of early fall starting to wash over like it’d been worked up by an artist with a wide, soft brush.
This Scott County passage demonstrates connection to landscape that shapes a person as much as their cellular DNA does. In the novel’s closing words, Elizabeth eloquently describes that connection, the one which binds her most of all:
These ridges and rivers and valleys, they become part of you. They test you. They strengthen you. And lord knows they humble you. It is their wildness, I think, a spirit that sets in your bones and remains no matter where life takes you. Because once this is your home, once you have surrendered your heart to these mountains, they will not let you go.
You are theirs forever.
Cathy Rigg
Cathy Rigg’s work has appeared in Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit; Still: The Journal; Women Speak: An Anthology of Women of Appalachia Project; and Clinch Mountain Review. Her short stories were finalists for the Doris Betts Fiction Prize (2023) and Lit/South (2023). She and her husband split their time between home in Columbia, SC, and a sweet mountain getaway in Western North Carolina where they stare at the view and obsess over the bears on a ridge high above Asheville.
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