Book Recommendation
Go As a River
By Shelley Read
There’s a new book in the world. Shelley Reade’s captivating debut novel, Go as a River touches beautifully on every stage of life–from innocence, to teenage lust and young-adult tenacity all the way to the perfect balance of love and ferocity that accompanies motherhood.
After her mother’s unexpected death, Torie Nash is sentenced to a life of servitude to her unavailable father, her sour uncle and malicious younger brother. When she falls in love with a wandering Indian boy named Wilson Moon their forbidden love tears at the worn threads holding together her male dominated family. Not long after Wil is found skinned and dead, seventeen year-old Torie realizes she is pregnant with his child.
For fans of Where the Crawdad’s Sing, Go as a River is a beautifully written story describing the forested mountains with such vivid precision, at times I swear I felt a pang of cool mountain air in my Louisiana lungs. And just when you begin to realize that Colorado’s harsh winters, hopeful springs and bountiful summers mirror the changes in Torie’s life, Read masterfully widens her lens to include the historical damming of the Gunnison River which is set to destroy the very ground beneath our heroine’s feet.
Fun Fact:
This summer I saw the Community Center for the Arts in Crested Butte was hosting a writing camp for teens. I called the Center and left a message offering to volunteer at the camp (I thought maybe I’d make lunches or staple handouts together). I secretly hoped to pick up on what the kids were being taught…I love a good writing workshop. The next day I got a call from Shelley Read. She’s coordinated and run this program out of the kindness of her heart for several years. After a brief conversation, she asked if I would lead a session for the young writers. I was thrilled. We talked on a few more occasions and by the time we met in person, I felt like I had a new friend. I watched her coax the muse from her young students who listened while relaxing in the grass or leaning against old tree trunks near Crested Butte’s Coal Creek. By the end of the day our conversation was easy and interesting; we talked about festivals and family–education and hobbies. She told me she had a novel coming out and how much she loved her agent. I told her about the novel I was finishing. A regular person who loves writing meets another regular person who loves writing. Pure and simple.
If you had asked me to describe Shelley before Sunday, I would have said she was kind, soft spoken, tender and thoughtful. I would have said she was a great teacher and a willing and generous friend. But Sunday, Sunday I sat down and devoured this book in one day. Sunday I realized my new friend Shelley was goin’ places.
Bravo to Shelley Read for a phenomenal first novel.
About The Author
An award-winning Senior Lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, Shelley taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and Honors, and was a founder of the interdisciplinary Environment & Sustainability major, the Prague study abroad program, and a support program for first-generation and at-risk students. She holds a double major honors BA in English and journalism from the University of Denver, and an MA from Temple University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing and the Temple Rome Seminar in Aesthetics. Shelley was also a Dean’s Fellow in the PhD Program in English at the University of Denver where she studied 19th and 20th-century world literature and philosophy.
Claire Bateman Writes 