Walking Across Egypt: A Young Elder Mattie Rigsbee is the main character in Clyde Edgerton’s southern style novel, Walking Across Egypt. Mattie is a seventy-eight year old widow with two middle-aged children. Living alone in a small house, she makes sure that everything is taken care of. She cooks, cleans, mows the lawn, and takes up numerous responsibilities with the church. She is a very caring person with many friends and a family that loves her dearly. At the time this novel takes place, Mattie is at a turning point in her life. Confusion disturbed her, because the things that people are telling her are not the words that she is ready