Shelley Read, "Go As a River"

Watchung Booksellers welcomes Shelley Read for the paperback release of her bestselling novel Go As a River.

About the event:
Tickets are $5 and required for entry. Ticket purchase includes a discount on the book at the event.

About the book:
Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, this is the heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. This “literary triumph” (Denver Post) is a tragic, uplifting novel of love and loss, place and displacement, prejudice and family, wilderness and survival—and hope.

Go as a River is a stunning debut set in the soul of the American dream.”—Adriana Trigiani, international bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

“Shelley Read's lyrical voice is a force of nature, and when she lends it to a woman leading a hardscrabble life in rural Colorado, the result is tragic, uplifting–and completely unforgettable.”—Bonnie Garmus, international bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

“With delicate precision, Read evokes both Colorado’s rugged wilderness and the landscapes of her characters’ troubled hearts. An auspicious debut.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

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.

Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola and the damming of the wild Gunnison River 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.

About the author:
Shelley Read’s debut novel, Go as a River, is an international bestseller that has 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.

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