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Staff Pick
Go as a River
Current price:
$28.00
Publication Date: February 28th, 2023
Publisher:
Spiegel & Grau
ISBN:
9781954118232
Pages:
320
Off the Beaten Path Bookstore
13 on hand, as of Apr 22 4:08am
(Fiction)
On Our Shelves Now
Staff Reviews
Go As A River was in a stack of ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) on my desk and I picked it up a few days before its release date, thinking there was a chance I might finish it before then. I didn’t, but I was enchanted by it immediately and amazed at how much I had enjoyed it when I did complete it.
Considering the basic elements of this book, it shouldn’t have appealed to me. It’s the story of a young woman coming of age. It’s historical fiction. It’s a debut novel. These are topics and genres I normally don’t gravitate toward, but I’m so glad I did. The author, Shelley Read, taught writing in Colorado for years before publishing Go As A River. What I enjoyed most in this book is the main character, Victoria Nash. By drawing a complete picture of Nash and her tribulations, Read also portrays the tribulations of small-town life in Southwest Colorado between the late 1940s through the early 1970s. In following Nash, her family, and those she encounters, you’ll learn about farming peaches, transplanting peach trees, flooding out towns to make reservoirs, and resilience, in humans and in nature.
-Mike
—
Fast paced and descriptive, the words never felt wasted. Set in the harsh reality of 1940s life, a teenage girl’s forbidden love stirs a small Colorado town where loss, prejudice, and rage prevail. As beautiful as it is devastating.
March 2023 Indie Next List
Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
* Finalist for Goodreads Choice Award * Colorado Public Radio 2023 Books We Love *
Set amid Colorado's wild beauty, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. A tragic and uplifting novel of love and loss, family and survival--and hope--for readers of Great Circle, The Four Winds, and Where the Crawdads Sing.
"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
Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family's peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado--the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.
Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known. She flees into the surrounding mountains where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward and rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland--its ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard that has been in her family for generations.
Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home--where least expected. This stunning debut explores what it means to lead your life as if it were a river--gathering and flowing, finding a way forward even when a river is dammed.
