Le destin d'une jeune femme au coeur des étendues sauvages du Colorado à la fin des années 1940 : un premier roman puissant.
Victoria Nash a dix-sept ans à la fin des années 1940, et elle gère d'une main de maître le verger de pêches de son père, à Iola, petite ville du Colorado entre montagnes et rivières. C'est la seule femme survivante de sa famille, et elle doit cohabiter avec un père colérique, un oncle acariâtre, et un frère violent. Lorsqu'elle rencontre par hasard Wilson Moon dans les rues d'Iola, la vie semble à nouveau lui sourire. Wil est un jeune vagabond au passé mystérieux et à la peau sombre. L'étincelle qui s'allume entre eux va déclencher autant de passion que de malheurs. La famille de Victoria refuse qu'elle côtoie un " indien ", et leurs entrevues deviennent de plus en plus risquées, jusqu'à ce qu'une tragédie survienne.
Victoria devra alors se battre pour se protéger et protéger le fruit de son amour interdit. Elle va survire contre les éléments des montagnes alentours où elle va se réfugier, et apprendre à continuer à vivre alors que tout ce qu'elle chérissait a disparu : sa ville, engloutie par les eaux de la Gunnison, les êtres aimés, et le souvenir d'une vie où tout était encore possible.
Cette saga est une force de la nature : au coeur des lacs, des montagnes, des rivières, le personnage de Victoria doit faire face aux changements de son temps (construction du barrage, guerre du Vietnam...), tout en sauvant sa propre vie et celle de son verger. Au risque de devoir abandonner une partie de soi pour pouvoir mieux la retrouver.
Un roman qui a déjà séduit un million de lecteurs dans le monde.
"A riveting and deeply moving debut--a love story in the spirit of Where the Crawdads Sing--that is both a stunning exploration of the natural world and an unforgettable coming-of-age novel. Victoria Nash is just a teenager in the 1940s, but she runs the household on her family's peach farm in the 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 in the Four Corners region, who wants to believe one place is just like another. When Victoria encounters Wil on a street corner, their unexpected connection ignites as much passion as danger and as many revelations as secrets. Victoria flees into the beautiful but harsh wilderness of the nearby mountains when tragedy strikes. Living in a small shack, she struggles to survive with no clear notion of what her future will be. What happens afterward is her quest to regain all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River rises to submerge her homeland and the only life she has ever known. Go as a River is a story of love and loss but also of finding home, family, resilience--and love--where least expected"--
''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, author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY _______________- What I''ve learnt about becoming is that it takes a long time. Nestled in the foothills of the Elk mountains and surrounded by sprawling forests, wandering bears and porcupine, the Gunnison river rushes by the tiny town of Iola. For seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash, the day promises to be as ordinary as the porridge and fried eggs she serves her family for breakfast. But just as a single rainstorm can erode the banks and change the course of a river, so can a chance encounter in a young woman''s life upturn her world and erase everything she was before. The mysterious drifter who crosses Victoria''s path that afternoon will set in motion an unstoppable chain of events. Soon, she will be forced to run for the forests, leaving her life - and her most precious possession - behind. In this soaring, singing, compassionate novel, a breathtaking picture of our natural world - its trees and mountains and light - emerges. But it is the astonishing tale of female reslience and becoming that gives GO AS A RIVER its strength, its soul, and its possibility. ''A devastatingly beautiful debut, Go As a River , delivers so very much: the tenderness and curiosity of young love, the eternal pangs of loss, the brutality of racism, the sustaining power of nature even in the face of man''s destruction, and the precarious miracle of a mother''s love. Suffused with wisdom and compassion, this shattering testimony to life is one to be savored, treasured, shared'' MEG WAITE CLAYTON, author of The Postmistress of Paris
