01/23/2023

A young woman’s courage is tested in Read’s affecting if undercooked debut, set in 1940s Colorado. Victoria Nash, 17 cares for her brother and father after her mother’s death, while helping keep up the family’s peach farm. She’s stifled by the controlling men in her life, so she takes comfort in fellow teen Wilson Moon, an openhearted newcomer who returns Victoria’s feelings. Because Wilson isn’t accepted by Victoria’s family or the community due to his Native American heritage, the couple hide their relationship. After Victoria learns she is pregnant, she flees alone to the forest for several months and has the child there. She leaves the baby with a couple she finds picnicking, in hopes the child will have a better life, and returns to her family. In the final act, set in 1970, Victoria learns of her son’s life through a series of letters, and Wilson’s fate becomes clear. The fleeting nature of Victoria’s two important relationships leaves them a bit underdeveloped, but Read beautifully evokes Victoria’s aching love for Wilson: “I wanted more of him, like a craving for sunshine hidden too long behind the clouds.” Though the family story is a bit too drawn out, there are plenty of shining moments. Agent: Sandra Bond, Bond Literary. (Mar.)

Beautiful . . . A striking first novel of love and strength and growth, set against the forests and rivers of Colorado’s high country. Read is a gifted writer, and the book is a literary triumph.”—Denver Post

“With gorgeous descriptions of the great outdoors, an illicit love story, and an unforgettable protagonist, Go as a River offers something for everyone.”—Real Simple

“Read delicately unfurls the growing attraction between Torie and Wil, set against vicious bigotry toward Native Americans. Their love is the “small fateful twist” that forever changes the trajectory of Torie’s life. With delicate precision, Read evokes both Colorado’s rugged wilderness and the landscapes of her characters’ troubled hearts. An auspicious debut.”—Kirkus (starred review)

“Shelley Read creates a truly convincing and lovable character in Torie, who faces loss and despair, and has to make a decision which is driven by love, yet tragic for herself. It’s a captivating novel, impossible to put down and one which will be remembered long after reading it.”—Irish Examiner

“This soaring, compassionate tale of female resilience is set against a breath-taking picture of our natural world—its trees and mountains and light.”—The Independent (UK)

“Lyrical . . . Read, a fifth-generation Coloradan, draws characters and settings with period authenticity, stunning imagery, and deft metaphors.”—Booklist

“Evocative . . . moving . . . fascinating . . . Through lush imagery of the natural world, Go as a River shows the possibility of growing in the most challenging of circumstances, the power that flows through us, and how the natural world can give us the strength to keep on going.”—The i Paper

“Shelley Read's lyrical voice is a force of nature, and when she lends it to a woman leading a hardscrabble life in rural Colorado, the result is tragic, uplifting—and completely unforgettable.”—Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry

“Shelley Read has written a splendid American Gothic tale of a young woman broken by circumstances who must find a way to forgive before she can love. Victoria Nash is a character for the ages as she navigates loss and despair on the road to redemption. The vast plains and desert canyons of her Colorado home are filled with ghosts until a mysterious drifter arrives and changes the course of her life forever. Go as a River is a stunning debut set in the soul of the American dream.”—Adriana Trigiani, author of The Good Left Undone

“In Go as a River, Shelley Read delivers a heartbreaking and uplifting tale of a girl becoming a woman in a man’s world. Young Victoria Nash is as tough and resilient as the Colorado mountains where she takes refuge, and as tender as the peaches that are her family legacy. Book clubs will love this redemptive story.”—Tiffany Quay Tyson, author of The Past Is Never

“Completely spellbinding, vivid, and luminous.”—Jane Green, author of Sister Stardust

“Shelley Read’s devastatingly beautiful debut, Go as a River, delivers so very much: the tenderness and curiosity of young love, the eternal pangs of loss, the brutality of racism, the sustaining power of nature even in the face of man’s destruction, and the precarious miracle of a mother’s love. Suffused with wisdom and compassion, this shattering testimony to life is one to be savored, treasured, shared.”—Meg Waite Clayton, internationally bestselling author of The Postmistress of Paris

★ 2022-12-14
A stranger comes to town.

Colorado native Read sets her graceful debut novel in the small community of Iola, a town along the Gunnison River in the western part of the state. Iola, readers learn in the first pages, no longer exists: It was flooded when the Gunnison was dammed to create the Blue Mesa Reservoir. But in 1948, when Read’s tale begins, Iola is the home of 17-year-old Victoria Nash, who keeps house for her father, a peach farmer; an embittered uncle who uses a wheelchair because of war injuries; and her angry, vengeful brother. Her mother, aunt, and a beloved cousin were killed in an auto accident when Torie was 12, leaving each family member bereft and Torie resigned to the burden of caretaking. After her mother died, Torie realized, “the men expected me to slip silently into her role—to cook their meals, clean their pee off the toilet, wash and hang their soiled clothes, and tend to every last thing in the house and the coops and the garden.” She hardly leaves her family’s 47 acres except to go to town, where, one day, she notices a young man who attracts her attention as no one has before. He has tan skin, straight black hair, gentle eyes, and a dazzling smile. His name is Wilson Moon, and to Torie, he seems mysterious and exotic. He had been working in the coal mines, he tells Torie, and he had run away. Now, he’s looking for the local flophouse, where he hopes to find a room. Read delicately unfurls the growing attraction between Torie and Wil, set against the town’s vicious bigotry toward Native Americans. Their love is the “small fateful twist” that forever changes the trajectory of Torie’s life. With delicate precision, Read evokes both Colorado’s rugged wilderness and the landscapes of her characters’ troubled hearts.

An auspicious debut.