Go As A River by Shelley Read

 

Victoria Nash walks to town with her brother one day when she is seventeen and her life changes forever.  She meets a boy Wilson Moon and is instantly entranced.  Torie has never had a boyfriend or even thought about having one.  She is busy running the house for her father, brother and uncle.  They live on a peach orchard in Colorado and Torie has been the household glue since her mother died.

Wil is a drifter and has ridden in on a train.  He is looking for work but instead found the love of his life.  He is an Indian, taken from his tribe and sent to a government school but when he ran away from there, he hit the rails.  The two start to meet secretly because there is a lot of prejudice against Native Americans in rural Colorado.  Soon they end up in bed and Torie knows this is who she wants to build a life with.

But that isn't to be.  Wil is set upon by vigilantes and killed.  Soon afterward, Torie realizes she is pregnant and runs away into the mountains to the shack where she and Wil were happy.  She lives there by herself until her baby is born.  Heading back, she realizes that her baby is starving and that she can't take care of him.  She leaves him with a family picnicking and returns home.

The years drift by and Torie loses more people.  Her father, brother and uncle are soon gone as is her elderly neighbor who helped her and Wil.  Torie endures, keeping the farm and orchard going and grieving Wil and her baby.  When the government decides to build a dam for water, her farm is one of the ones that will be destroyed.  She moves elsewhere and rebuilds a life.

Shelley Read is a native of Colorado and her love of her state shines through in this novel.  Readers will admire Torie although they will grieve along with her about the hard life she has been handed.  I learned a lot about the state and its beauty.  This book is recommended for readers of women's and literary fiction.