Go as a River, Hardcover

A riveting and deeply moving debut--a love story in the spirit of Where the Crawdads Sing--that is both a stunning exploration of the natural world and an unforgettable coming-of-age novel.

Victoria Nash is just a teenager in the 1940s, but she runs the household on her family's peach farm in the 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 in the Four Corners region, who wants to believe one place is just like another. When Victoria encounters Wil on a street corner, their unexpected connection ignites as much passion as danger and as many revelations as secrets. Victoria flees into the beautiful but harsh wilderness of the nearby mountains when tragedy strikes. Living in a small shack, she struggles to survive with no clear notion of what her future will be. What happens afterward is her quest to regain all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River rises to submerge her homeland and the only life she has ever known. Go as a River is a story of love and loss but also of finding home, family, resilience--and love--where least expected.

Shelley Read is a fifth generation Coloradoan who lives with her family in the Elk Mountains of the Western Slope. She was a Senior Lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, where she taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and Honors, and was a founder of the Environment & Sustainability major and a support program for first-generation and at-risk students. Shelley holds degrees in writing and literary studies from the University of Denver and Temple University's Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is a regular contributor to Crested Butte Magazine and Gunnison Valley Journal, and has written for the Denver Post and a variety of publications.

Book specifications:

• Dimensions: 213 x 142
• Author: Shelley Read
• Cover type: Hardcover
• Publishing Year: 2023
• Publishing Month: 2
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
• Weight: 476 g