Shelley Read’s debut novel Go as a River emerges like the waters that course through its pages—powerful, persistent, and ultimately transformative. Set against the stark beauty of mid-century Colorado, this sweeping historical fiction follows Victoria Nash from a sheltered seventeen-year-old farm girl to a woman forged by extraordinary circumstances and impossible choices. Read, a fifth-generation Coloradoan and longtime educator at Western Colorado University, brings an intimate understanding of both the landscape and the human heart to this remarkable story of becoming.
The novel opens in 1948 with what seems like a simple encounter: Victoria delivering peaches from her family’s orchard meets Wilson Moon, a mysterious stranger asking for directions. This moment, rendered with exquisite attention to detail, sets in motion a cascade of events that will uproot Victoria from everything she has known and thrust her into a harsh world where love and survival often stand in opposition.
The Architecture of Character Development
Read demonstrates exceptional skill in crafting Victoria’s evolution from Torie, the obedient daughter constrained by societal expectations, to Victoria, a woman who claims her own name and destiny. The transformation feels both inevitable and surprising, rooted in the character’s innate strength while acknowledging the brutal circumstances that call it forth. Victoria’s voice, particularly in the novel’s later sections, carries the weight of hard-won wisdom without losing the essential humanity that makes her journey so compelling.
Wilson Moon, though present for only a portion of the narrative, leaves an indelible impression. Read avoids the trap of romanticizing him while still conveying the magnetism that draws Victoria to him. His gentle strength and tragic fate serve as both catalyst and cautionary tale, embodying the novel’s broader themes about the cost of crossing social boundaries in 1940s America.
The supporting characters, from the bitter Uncle Ogden to the enigmatic Ruby-Alice Akers, feel lived-in and authentic. Each serves a specific function in Victoria’s journey while maintaining their own distinct voice and motivation. Perhaps most notably, Read handles the character of Seth—Victoria’s volatile brother—with nuance, showing how trauma and limited worldview can corrupt even familial bonds.
Landscape as Character and Metaphor
Where Read truly excels is in her portrayal of the Colorado landscape as both setting and spiritual force. The Big Blue wilderness, the Gunnison River, and the family peach orchard become characters in their own right, shaping the narrative’s rhythm and emotional resonance. The author’s deep connection to this region shows in every description, from the harsh beauty of high mountain meadows to the devastating loss when the government’s dam project drowns entire communities beneath Blue Mesa Reservoir.
The novel’s structure mirrors the river that runs through it—sometimes placid, sometimes turbulent, always moving forward despite obstacles. Read’s prose style reflects this natural rhythm, with sentences that can flow gently like a meandering stream or crash down like mountain runoff. This technical mastery serves the story’s emotional arc, creating a reading experience that feels both immersive and inevitable.
The Weight of Historical Context
Read anchors her fictional narrative in very real historical events, particularly the forced relocation of communities for the Blue Mesa Dam project and the broader context of treatment of Native Americans in the mid-20th century. Wilson Moon’s tragic fate speaks to the violent racism that Indigenous people faced, while the government’s erasure of entire towns reflects the period’s faith in progress at any human cost.
The novel doesn’t shy away from difficult truths about this era, presenting them through Victoria’s gradually expanding awareness. Her initial naivety about the world beyond her farm gives way to a more complex understanding of injustice and survival. This evolution feels earned rather than imposed, growing naturally from her experiences.
Narrative Structure and Pacing
The book’s five-part structure effectively charts Victoria’s journey from innocence through crisis to hard-won wisdom. The early sections, set in Iola, establish the claustrophobic world of expectations and limitations that Victoria must eventually escape. The middle portion, chronicling her time in the wilderness, represents both the novel’s most harrowing and most beautiful passages. Read’s depiction of Victoria giving birth alone and ultimately making the agonizing decision to leave her baby with strangers ranks among contemporary fiction’s most powerful sequences.
The later sections, following Victoria’s attempt to rebuild her life in Paonia, demonstrate Read’s ability to sustain narrative tension even as the pace shifts. The decades-spanning timeline allows for a satisfying exploration of how early trauma continues to shape choices, while the introduction of characters like Zelda Cooper provides welcome moments of warmth and humor.
Areas for Critical Consideration
While Go as a River succeeds on multiple levels, certain elements warrant critical examination. The novel’s treatment of Wilson Moon, while respectful, occasionally feels constrained by the perspective of a white narrator approaching Indigenous experience. Read handles this sensitively, acknowledging the limitations of Victoria’s understanding, but some readers may find the portrayal incomplete.
Additionally, the book’s later sections, while emotionally satisfying, occasionally feel less urgent than the earlier crisis-driven narrative. The decades-long search for Victoria’s son, while thematically important, sometimes lacks the immediate stakes that make the novel’s first half so compelling.
The novel’s length—over 400 pages—serves its sweeping scope but may test some readers’ patience during certain transitional passages. However, Read’s prose style and the strength of Victoria’s voice generally sustain interest even during quieter moments.
Thematic Resonance and Contemporary Relevance
At its heart, Go as a River explores themes that resonate deeply with contemporary readers: environmental destruction, social justice, women’s autonomy, and the search for belonging. Victoria’s journey from powerlessness to agency speaks to timeless questions about how individuals navigate systems designed to constrain them.
The novel’s environmental consciousness feels particularly relevant, as Read depicts both the beauty of the natural world and humanity’s capacity to destroy it in pursuit of progress. The flooding of Victoria’s homeland serves as both plot device and metaphor for the losses that modernity demands.
Literary Craftsmanship and Style
Read’s background as an educator shows in the novel’s careful construction and attention to language. Her prose achieves a difficult balance—lyrical without being precious, accessible without being simple. The author demonstrates particular skill in rendering the physical world, whether describing the texture of peach skin or the bone-deep cold of a mountain winter.
The novel’s emotional intelligence stands as perhaps its greatest strength. Read understands that trauma doesn’t simply fade with time, that healing happens in spirals rather than straight lines, and that survival often requires choices that defy easy moral judgment.
Recommended Similar Reads
Readers who appreciate Go as a River might enjoy:
- Playground by Richard Powers – for its environmental themes and multiple interconnected narratives
- The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah – for its depiction of women’s resilience during American hardship
- The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel – for wartime survival stories with strong female protagonists
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens – for coming-of-age stories set in natural environments
- News of the World by Paulette Jiles – for historical fiction exploring the American frontier experience
Final Verdict
Go as a River announces Shelley Read as a significant new voice in historical fiction. While the novel occasionally struggles with pacing and perspective, its emotional authenticity and lyrical power make it a memorable reading experience. Shelley Read has crafted a story that honors both the beauty and brutality of the American West while creating a protagonist whose journey toward self-determination feels both specific to her time and universally relevant.
This is a novel that trusts its readers to sit with difficult emotions and complex moral questions. Like the river that gives it its title, the story carries readers forward through landscapes both beautiful and treacherous, ultimately delivering them to a destination that feels both surprising and inevitable. For a debut novel, Go as a River demonstrates remarkable maturity and ambition, marking Read as an author to watch in the historical fiction genre.
