Ritual River - Softcover

In her second novel, Nancy Sales Cash shows us the parallel lives of two fated lovers whose romance fuels the novel as the frontier and modern settings of North Carolina dramatically collide. Dr. Carol Mattox, an anthropologist working in the Southwest, is called home to Asheville to her dying brother’s bedside. While home, Carol learns of the Mattox curse, which has struck the Mattox clan for nearly 200 years. The logical anthropologist refuses to believe the rumors of the ancient Indian curse until she is presented with irrefutable evidence and learns of the star-crossed lovers, the formidable Isabelle and the irresistible Chief Tallaquoyah Wolf. Was her brother’s suspicious death the result of the ancient curse? Is she herself destined to meet the same fate? As the story unfolds, Dr. Mattox sets out to find the terrible truth about her family’s past. We learn, as Carol learns, of the doomed love affair and the curse that change the Wolf and Mattox families forever.Cash takes us back to the early nineteenth century when Isabelle, the daughter of a respected and powerful white family, meets the regal and handsome Chief Wolf. Wolf saves her from drowning in the “ritual river,” so much a part of the two Carolinian dynasties, one white and one Indian. What will it take to break the spell of the Nantahala Gorge? Carol learns the heart-breaking answer as she is reunited with Winston, her first love. The passions of the two are rekindled amidst family objections and ancient, cultural hatreds. In the stirring climax, the “ritual river” will, once again, play a part as the lovers struggle to appease ancient spirits and modern adversaries.