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A Novel
by Shelley ReadSet 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.
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.
One
1948
He wasn't much to look at.
Not at first, anyway.
"Pardon," the young man said, a grimy thumb and forefinger tugging at the brim of his tattered red ball cap. "This the way to the flop?"
As simple as that. This ordinary question from a filthy stranger walking up Main Street just as I arrived at the intersection with North Laura.
His overalls and hands were blackened with coal, which I assumed was axle grease or layers of dirt from the fields, though it was too dark for either. His cheeks were smudged. Tan skin shone through trickled sweat. Straight black hair jutted from beneath his cap.
The autumn day had begun as ordinary as the porridge and fried eggs I had served the men for breakfast. I noticed nothing uncommon as I went on to tend the house and the docile animals in their pens, picked two baskets of late-season peaches in the cool morning air, and made my daily deliveries pulling the rickety wagon behind my bicycle, then returned ...
The best part of the novel is Victoria herself. Read creates such a lifelike, three-dimensional character that I woke up one morning wondering how my friend was doing, only realizing after a second that the person I was worried about wasn't flesh and blood. In short, Go as a River is a truly stellar work, so nearly perfect that it's hard to believe it's Shelley Read's first book. It earns my highest rating and is one of my favorites of the year. I recommend it to most audiences, particularly those who enjoy brilliantly written coming-of-age works. Book groups, too, will want to put this one on their reading lists, as many great discussion topics can be found within its pages...continued
Full Review (580 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
In Shelley Read's debut novel, Go as a River, the heroine's life revolves around her peach farm in Colorado.
Genetically the peach is part of the rose family, but its closest relative is the almond. Its genera, Prunus, also includes cherry, apricot and plum trees. While its formal name, Prunus persica, translates to "Persian plum," it's believed that peaches were first cultivated in China. Archeological evidence points to orchards in Zhejiang Provence as early as 6000 BCE.
Peaches spread across the globe over the ensuing millennia. While the fruit itself is relatively fragile, the seeds grow readily and are easily transported, making them easy to propagate. After becoming established in the Middle East, peaches arrived in Europe ...
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