“Go as a river” is a coming-of-age story set in Colorado across a time period of 1948-71.

The main character, Victoria, is a lonely, motherless 17-year old girl trying to survive in a hard family farm setting with some harsh male family members. She meets and falls passionately for a young American Indian man with a mysterious past tied up with the Indian Boarding schools’ system, a fascinating and terrible piece of US history. Community prejudice forces the pair onto a path fraught with danger and ultimately tragedy. Victoria has to fnd within herself an inner strength to overcome loss on many levels and to fnd a source of hope to sustain her through her life.

Threaded through the story is the impact that a huge environmental project is beginning to have on the area around the Gunnison River, its communities and its natural assets. The Blue Mesa Reservoir was created in 1966 by the flooding of the Gunnison River for the production of hydro-electric power. This was years in the planning and involved much heartbreak and displacement of communities from their ancestral lives, history and their natural environments.

The author has her roots in this geographical area and has her skills and strengths in writing, literature and environmental studies. This is her debut novel, written in her 50s. It comes from her heart and from her own experiences of the town and its inhabitants.

Whilst I struggled with “Where the Crawdads Sing”, (a comparable book by Delia Owens) where I felt the amount and intensity of the description detracted from the tale being told, I felt that Shelley Read achieved a much better balance. Without giving too much away, there is an ongoing mystery which propels you through to the mainly satisfying end. Not a perfect book but a well-drawn main character, enough description to transport you to another place, enough intrigue to keep you guessing and an added element of environmental history. Definitely worth a read.

Copies of “Go as a river” and “Where the Crawdads sing” are available through the Barrow Community Library.

Catherine Holmes