September 2025: Shelley Read’s Go As A River

Episode 86

Sometimes you  read a book that just wrecks you in the best possible way — the kind of story that stays in your bones long after you close the last page. Go As A River is exactly that kind of book. It is a lyrical and haunting coming-of-age novel set amid the rugged beauty of Colorado’s Western Slope in the late 1940s through the mid-20th century. Inspired by true events—the disappearance of the small ranching town of Iola beneath the Blue Mesa Reservoir—Shelley Read crafts a story that is both intimately personal and richly symbolic. 

Shelley is a fifth-generation Coloradan who has spent her life in the Gunnison Valley, and you can feel that connection to the land in every line of this novel. Shelley has spent decades teaching writing and literature, but with this debut (now an international bestseller) she’s given us something timeless — a story about love, loss, and the courage to keep moving forward like the river itself.