Book Review: Go as a Rivers

Go as a River wasn’t even a book I was aware of until just this past year.  After my partner read the book last year and rated it a very rare 5 out of 5, I was curious what level of quality the book had to be able to impress her so immensely. It wasn’t until recently when I was looking for inspiration on what to pick up and read next, that my partner finally convinced me to give Go as a River a try and find out for myself. The books author, Shelley Read was an award-winning lecturer who taught out of Colorado University for over three decades in subjects like writing, literature and environmental studies. With all that experience and knowledge behind her, it makes logical sense she’d put it all towards crafting and publishing her own form of literature eventually and hence on February 28th 2023, Go as a River was published to the world. 

Go as a River takes places in a small southern-Colorado town soon after the end of World War II.  Its perspective follows a young Victoria Nash, a timid woman bound to the traditional role society has set for her in tending to her family’s peach grove and serving to her father and brothers needs. It’s on a random day that she meets an indigenous man who wanders into town by the name of Wilson Moon.  Despite hitting it off almost immediately, the reality of the times soon separates Victoria from entertaining a public relationship with the man.  Despite the pressure and ire from her father and brother, Victoria soon relents and elopes with Wilson in secrecy.  As time goes by, the repercussions of their relationship force Victoria to make a number of tough decisions which will ripple through the remainder of her days and the narrative follows Victoria on this journey though the decades after. 

The story Victoria Nash goes on throughout the course of this book is a beautiful, thematic dive into the impacts key decisions can have on our lives.  Victoria as a character is introduced as someone who understands her role in life and was raised not to question it. Where we meet Victoria in the book though, we see she is beginning to struggle with the role she has been expected to fill and her internal journey to question it and want for more is really nuanced.  The narrative pivots everything around her so it helps that she’s such a compelling character filled with so much definition and relatability.  The story works not only as a character piece, but it reflects the periods it’s based in in a smart fashion as it gives a lot of foundation for the events to unfold over without taking anything away from the struggle and turmoil Victoria is living. What really works for me though is the themes at play here. It’s a heavily relatable book with the way Victoria’s life progresses through time. Her struggle ends up becoming the readers struggle and you yearn for her to find some peace by the end of the story. 

What really helps elevate this book above many others of its kind is its structure and writing. Shelley Read writes like someone who has been writing all of her life.  The way she writes sequences with such descriptive and concise wording really helps to reinforce the pure quality of this book. There’s never a wasted word here either, often at times an author can fall into a habit of being too descriptive and ends up padding out a scene or chapter unnecessarily; I never felt that in this books case.  There’s a lot of emotion layered into this story and it’s given all the weight and gravitas required through Read’s expert writing ability. 

It's been a long while since I’ve been as engaged in a singular book like Go as a River.  It’s rare book which is able to deliver on its premise with very little concessions.  It’s a story which dives deep into the guilt we can face in the wake of the difficult decisions we are forced to make and explores ways to live with them. It’s a wonderfully explorative piece of written work which I will not soon be forgetting anytime soon and I thank my partner for recommending it to me.