Read delights Estes Park library audience with 'Go As A River' background story
June 29, 2025Elisabeth Sherwin -- ensherwin@gmail dot com
Columnist
If you had been able to time travel and magically appear before Shelley Read at any time during the lonely 13 years it took her to write her first novel, "Go As A River," you might have had something important to tell her.
You might have whispered in her ear that her book would sell more than a million copies worldwide. Or you might have told her that her book would be translated into 34 languages. Or that her book would be made into a movie. Wow, wow, wow!
The book's incredible success surprised a lot of people.
"No one is more shocked than I," she told the audience at a reading Friday night June 13 at the Estes Valley Library hosted by the Friends of the Library Foundation. "I wrote this book never knowing what would happen. Writing is very quiet and private and I didn't know if one person would read it."
On the other hand, Read said she always wanted to be a writer. And the book that she finally wrote could only come about in the fullness of time.
"I never could have written this as a younger woman," she said. "It came out when I was 57 years old."
When she spoke at the library she was in the middle of a book tour and had just finished the East Coast leg of the trip.
"I am super honored to be here," she said. And by that she meant not just at the library, and not just in a mountain town, but back in her home state of Colorado.
Read is a fifth-generation Coloradan. She and her husband, Eric, have lived in Crested Butte for 35 years. And "Go As A River" is a Colorado story, set in the Gunnison Valley.
Read said she went to the University of Denver where she double-majored in creative writing and journalism. She attended Temple University in Philadelphia for her MFA. But then her life took a turn.
"In grad school I was awarded a teaching fellowship and I just fell in love with teaching. What could be better than lifting up young people?"
She taught at Western State Colorado University for 27 years and wrote less and less. And finally she wasn't writing at all.
"I became a Mom to two...and I just didn't have time," she said.
"But our lives have many seasons," Read added.
And while she wasn't writing, a character -- Victoria Nash -- was growing in her mind. Nash was a teen-ager in the 1940s in Iola, Colo. She ran the household for her father, uncle and brother on the family's peach farm. One day, she meets a young drifter named Wilson Moon and her life is forever and radically changed, calling on all the strengths she can muster.
"I didn't know how to write a novel," Read said. "I figured it out by writing it. And I am most proud that I finished it."
She said her novel came together when she decided to set it in the now-extinct town of Iola, which was inundated by the creation of the Blue Mesa Dam and Reservoir. Displacement became a theme of the novel touching on Native American prejudice, the role of women, found family, the natural world and not incidentally, peach farming. No spoilers here. You have to read the book.
But she was happy to explain what it means to "go as a river."
"We are more strong and resilient than we know. Rivers always find a way to move forward and that's a powerful metaphor for the human journey."
Read also had a special message for the audience in Estes Park.
"I was born in Greeley," she said, "and our family came up (to Estes Park) every weekend." She credits Rocky Mountain National Park and the surrounding area for instilling in her a fierce love and need for wilderness.
Today, when she finds herself suffering from "excessive domesticity," she grabs her tent and goes to the wild places she loves between Crested Butte and Aspen.
"I find my best self in wild landscapes," she said.
But she also is still a writer.
"I am working on a second novel," she said. "And my publisher will not let me take 13 years." It is set in the southeast corner of Colorado where Read's ancestors were early homesteaders.
Not only that, but "Go As A River" may become a movie. It has been optioned and is in development.
She described the thought of seeing her book on a movie screen as "really surreal."
Stay tuned.
"I hope they film it in Colorado."
Photo: Author Shelley Read in Colorado.
-- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at ensherwin@gmail.com
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