Go as a River
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER and BOOK CLUB FAVORITE * Over 1 million copies sold worldwide!
* 2024 High Plains Book Award Winner * 2023 Reading the West Book Award Winner * Finalist for Goodreads Choice Award * Colorado Public Radio 2023 Books We Love * 2025 Prix de l'Union Interalliée *
Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, the 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
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it . . . it’s stunning.”—Jen Hatmaker
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, igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known, fleeing 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.
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Shelley Read’s debut novel, Go as a River, is an international bestseller that has sold over a million copies worldwide, been translated into thirty-four languages, and is in development for film with the Mazur Kaplan Company. Winner of the High Plains Book Award for Fiction and the Reading the West Book Award for Debut Fiction, Go as a River is also a Sunday Times bestseller, a Goodreads Choice Award finalist, an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Debut Fiction, an Indie Next Pick, and a Colorado Public Radio Books We Love selection, among other national and international accolades.
Shelley was an award-winning senior lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, where she taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and honors. She is a mom, mountaineer, world traveler, and fifth-generation Coloradan who lives with her family in the Elk Mountains of Colorado’s Western Slope.