Read, Shelley. Go As a River. New York: Spiegel & Grau 2023. Print.
He wasn't much to look at. Not at first, anyway.
Description:
I had tried...to go as a river, but it had taken me a long while to understand what that meant. Flowing forward against obstacle was not my whole story. For, like the river, I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else, and doing this had delivered me here, with two fists of forest soil in my palms and a heart still learning to be unafraid of itself.
Victoria Nash, a seventeen-year-old girl, lives with her father, uncle, and younger brother on their generational peach ranch, serving the men in her family and helping with the crops after the deaths of her mother, aunt, and older brother in a auto accident five years earlier. She has no dreams of another life or the world outside her home and nearby woods until a young stranger drifts through town...and she is smitten.
God will bring two strangers together on the corner of North Laura and Main and lead them toward love. God won't make it easy.
The consequences of her love for this outsider drive the remainder of the story as she leaves her home and family to be with this young man. But soon the reality of life in that era intrudes on the couple's world and both young people and their lives are forever changed.
That's all I will reveal of the compelling plot. But please know this is a very special tale of choices, survival, love, and family as seen through the narrator's (Victoria's) eyes and senses. She is passionate about her family and the natural world that surrounds her, and works to nurture and preserve both by whatever means available to her strength and determination. Her voice is true and strong, whether describing her surroundings or contemplating her doubts and obstacles she faces in her present and future life.
The old house smelled like only old houses do, like stories, like decades of buttery skillet breakfasts and black coffee and dripping faucets, like family and life and aging wood.
This is completely Victoria's story, although other major characters are depicted with skill and honesty by author Read. It is a dreamy book in some ways, but always under laid with the reality of the challenging world surrounding this young girl and her later adult years.
I was completely caught up in Victoria and her world, her intense will to survive as well as her heartfelt doubts about whichever road she decides to take. read's prose is simple and clear as the orchard and woods Victoria inhabits, exactly setting the tone on both innocence and gritty determination.
He would teach me how true a life emptied of all but its essentials could feel and that, when you got down to it, not much mattered outside the determination to go on living.
Happy reading.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Doig, Ivan. The Whistling Season.
A young, mysterious woman takes on work as housekeeper to a man and his sons on a small Montana farm. Along with her brother, she ingratiates herself into the family and community with long-reaching affects. Narrated by one of the young sons, it is a highly descriptive, delightful story of the people and events in a rural town. Absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. Highest recommendation. (previously reviewed here)
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