Fifth generation Coloradan Shelley Read joins Taya Jae to discuss history, knowledge of place, and her debut novel, Go As A River, which follows one woman's story of becoming.
Go As A River is out now.
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 hut, she struggles to survive in the unforgiving conditions 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.
