Shelley Read’s debut novel Go as a River emerges like morning mist over the Colorado landscape—ethereal, haunting, and impossible to forget. This sweeping historical fiction weaves together the intimate story of Victoria Nash with the broader tapestry of mid-20th century America, creating a narrative that flows with the inexorable power of the river that serves as both metaphor and witness to her extraordinary journey.
The Heart of the Story: Where Fate Meets Choice
Set against the rugged beauty of Colorado’s western slope in 1948, the novel opens with seventeen-year-old Victoria—known then as Torie—delivering peaches from her family’s orchard when a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger named Wilson Moon sets her life spinning in directions she never imagined. What begins as a simple request for directions becomes the catalyst for a love story that transcends racial boundaries, challenges societal expectations, and ultimately demands unthinkable sacrifices.
Read demonstrates remarkable skill in crafting a narrative that feels both intimately personal and historically significant. Victoria’s story unfolds against the backdrop of a changing America—the construction of dams that would drown entire communities, the complex legacy of Indian boarding schools, and the persistent undercurrents of racial prejudice in small-town Colorado. The author’s deep connection to this landscape shines through every page, creating a sense of place so vivid that the Colorado wilderness becomes a character in its own right.
Character Development: The Evolution of Victoria Nash
Victoria’s transformation from an obedient farm girl to a woman of extraordinary resilience forms the novel’s emotional core. Read’s portrayal of her protagonist feels authentic and nuanced, avoiding the trap of creating a character who is either wholly victim or unrealistic heroine. Victoria’s choices—particularly her decision to flee to the wilderness when pregnant and her later choice to give up her child—emerge from circumstances that feel both heartbreaking and inevitable.
The supporting characters are equally well-drawn, particularly Wilson Moon, whose brief but powerful presence in the novel reverberates through every subsequent page. Read avoids stereotypical portrayals, instead creating a young man whose complexity and dignity shine through despite the limited time he spends on the page. The relationship between Victoria and Wilson feels genuine and deeply felt, making their separation all the more devastating.
Perhaps most compelling is the character of Ruby-Alice Akers, the elderly woman dismissed by the community as mad but who becomes Victoria’s unlikely savior. Through Ruby-Alice, Read explores themes of isolation, misunderstanding, and the way society often discards those who don’t fit conventional molds.
Narrative Structure: The River’s Flow
The novel’s structure mirrors its central metaphor, flowing forward while carrying the sediment of memory and consequence. Read employs a multi-temporal narrative that weaves between Victoria’s youth and her later years, allowing readers to see how the choices made in 1948 continue to shape her life decades later. This approach requires considerable skill to execute successfully, and Read manages it with grace, maintaining clarity while building emotional resonance.
The inclusion of Inga Tate’s perspective—the woman who finds and raises Victoria’s abandoned child—adds crucial depth to the narrative. Rather than leaving this as a mystery, Read allows readers to see the full circle of her story, showing how acts of desperation can become acts of love in different hands. This narrative choice enriches the novel’s exploration of motherhood, sacrifice, and the different forms that family can take.
Writing Style: Poetry in Prose
Read’s prose carries the cadence of the natural world she describes so lovingly. Her writing is lyrical without being overwrought, finding beauty in both the harsh realities of survival and the quiet moments of grace that punctuate Victoria’s journey. The author’s background as a longtime educator and Colorado native infuses the narrative with authenticity—she writes about the landscape, the communities, and the era with the authority of lived experience.
The metaphor of “going as a river” that gives the novel its title is woven throughout the narrative with subtle artistry. Rather than being heavy-handed, the water imagery flows naturally through the prose, reinforcing themes of persistence, adaptation, and the way individual stories connect to larger currents of history and change.
Historical Context and Social Commentary
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its integration of historical events and social issues into the personal narrative. The construction of Blue Mesa Dam and the subsequent flooding of entire communities provides a powerful backdrop that parallels Victoria’s own displacement and loss. Read handles the complex history of Indian boarding schools and the treatment of Native Americans with sensitivity and respect, avoiding appropriation while acknowledging historical injustices.
The racial dynamics of the novel feel authentic to the time period without excusing the prejudices they reveal. The tragic fate that befalls Wilson Moon serves as a stark reminder of the violence that often met interracial relationships in mid-century America, while Victoria’s brother Seth embodies the casual cruelty that such prejudices could nurture.
Themes That Resonate
The novel explores multiple interconnected themes with remarkable depth:
The nature of belonging and displacement, both literal and emotional
The different forms that motherhood can take, from biological to chosen family
Environmental destruction and its human cost, particularly relevant in our current climate
The persistence of love across time and separation
The way individual choices ripple through generations
Read weaves these themes together without ever feeling didactic, allowing them to emerge naturally from Victoria’s experiences and observations.
Minor Criticisms
While Go as a River succeeds on most levels, there are areas where the narrative occasionally falters. Some readers may find the pacing uneven, particularly in the middle sections where Victoria’s solitary life on her new farm, while beautifully rendered, sometimes lacks the dramatic tension of the earlier and later portions of the novel.
Additionally, while the novel’s length allows for deep character development and rich atmosphere, certain subplot elements could have been trimmed without losing impact. The extensive details about peach cultivation, while adding authenticity, occasionally slow the narrative momentum.
The resolution, while emotionally satisfying, may feel somewhat convenient to some readers, though the careful groundwork Read lays throughout the novel makes the ending feel earned rather than imposed.
Literary Merit and Lasting Impact
Go as a River succeeds as both an intimate character study and a broader examination of American history and values. Read’s ability to ground universal themes in specific, authentic details creates a reading experience that feels both immediate and timeless. The novel joins the ranks of American fiction that uses the landscape of the West not merely as setting but as a crucial element in understanding character and theme.
Recommended Reading for Fans
Readers who appreciate Go as a River should consider these similar works:
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens – for its isolated female protagonist and nature writing
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson – for its Appalachian setting and strong female character
News of the World by Paulette Jiles – for its portrayal of survival in the American West
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah – for its historical scope and resilient heroine
Educated by Tara Westover – for its exploration of family, place, and self-determination
Final Thoughts
Go as a River marks the arrival of a significant new voice in American fiction. Shelley Read has crafted a novel that honors both the beauty and the brutality of the American experience, creating characters whose struggles and triumphs feel deeply human and ultimately hopeful. While this is Read’s debut novel, her background as an educator and her deep roots in Colorado inform every page with authenticity and wisdom.
The novel succeeds in that most difficult of literary tasks: creating a story that feels both specific to its time and place and universally relevant to the human experience. In Victoria Nash, Read has created a character whose journey from loss to healing, from displacement to belonging, speaks to our contemporary moment while honoring the specific historical forces that shaped her world.
For readers seeking literary fiction that combines beautiful prose with compelling storytelling, historical authenticity with contemporary relevance, Go as a River offers a deeply satisfying reading experience that will linger long after the final page.