Cathy Rigg: Reading & Signing

Join us at Hub City Bookshop with author Cathy Rigg as she discusess her novel That Which Binds Us. We have a variety of speakers who will be discussing not just the book, but the artwork involved as well. Cathy Rigg will begin in conversation with Spartanburg native Sally Jeter Gregg. Followed by Sarah Tignor of The Johnson Collection who will give a brief talk on Robert Duncanson, the 19th century artist who painted “French Broad” — the 1850 painting featured on the cover of my That Which Binds Us. Ryon Edwards will be concluding the evening with a brief discussion about his considerations in designing the book cover which was done in collaboration with Turner Publishing. 

Get a 10% discount on the book when you RSVP on Eventbrite and present it at the bookshop register.

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About the Book

In the 1860s, on Virginia’s Appalachian frontier, the fates of five people are forever linked as they navigate love, loss, and the cost of buried secrets amid the strife and turmoil of an unimaginable civil war.

In 1854, on the lawless western edge of Virginia, Elizabeth Young stands among the throngs and watches as her beloved uncle is hanged for murder. She can tell that there is more to this spectacle than meets the eye, and she vows then and there she’ll discover the truth then leave these godforsaken mountains. She’ll go where the land is flat, where life is in the open, where dreams have room to roam.

But fate has another idea. Three strangers with dreams and secrets of their own come into her life: Patrick Hagan, Irish Catholic immigrant and a bright young attorney with a dogged determination to do good and make good; Mary Lenore Kitchens, the sophisticated teacher who’s come to Virginia’s hinterlands, for who knows why; handsome Ben Grubb, local boy, banjo prodigy, a mischievous sort who wants only to play. Soon their lives become inextricably linked, along with that of Red Hopkins, an old friend to Elizabeth’s Papa, and in marches the Civil War.

Punctuated by class and the realities of a devastating conflict, That Which Binds Us is a broad work of historical fiction that celebrates our best and explores our worst, serving to remind us that across continents and cultures and generations, love holds the greatest power of all.

About the Author

Cathy Rigg is the author of the novel That Which Binds Us, published by Turner Publishing’s Keylight Books in June 2025. Her 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.