‘Go As a River’

For most, the stories of the small town of Iola disappeared in the 1960s, with the construction of the Blue Mesa Dam and subsequent flooding of the towns at the bottom of the reservoir. But this winter, a work of fiction by local author Shelley Read breathes new life into the bygone era, surfacing stories of loss and resilience through the eyes of a young Iola woman finding new ways forward in the face of tremendous change.

Read, a fifth-generation Coloradan, spent decades in the valley absorbing the mountain air and soaking up stories of the past. She comes from a long line of Coloradans who, like many others migrating west in the 19th century, labored for life in the unforgiving Wild West. Her great, great grandmothers and grandfathers, farmers and ranchers alike, homesteaded back in the late 1800s in various areas of the state.

“I have that history in my bones,” she said.

Read grew up visiting the Gunnison Valley, returning to the familiar hills during summers between college and graduate school. She recalled dirt streets winding into the hills and the local creed that, “there are more dogs than people in town.” The warm memories of her early adulthood inspired her to put roots down in the valley after graduate school, and soon she was working three or four jobs at a time, wandering into the wilderness as much as time would allow.

“I grew up with a great connection and a great affection for the Gunnison Valley,” she said. “I was very lucky to be able to go to Crested Butte before anyone really knew what Crested Butte was.”

Her time in the natural world and “wild places and landscapes,” forged deep connections with the land and its history. Like laying bricks in a foundation, each hike or moment spent in the backcountry furthered an inherent love for the land.

Read would spend nearly three decades at Western Colorado University, teaching writing, literature, environmental studies and honor classes. She took an early retirement in 2018, which opened a new chapter to focus on her writing career.

The seeds of writing were ultimately sown decades before. At only 9 years old, Read had already written a 66-page book about forest creatures — 64 pages beyond what the school assignment required. On the envelope containing the writing, a young Read had even written herself a copyright. Looking at the story as an adult, she said she was taken aback by the focus she had on the natural world, a theme that would prevail through her later years of writing.

The “spark” for the story happened in a fitting manner for her upbringing, camping alone in the upper East River Valley. While sitting alone in a meadow, Read saw a mother deer shuffle into the open field with her two babies. The subtleness of the moment captured for Read a question that would become the thread in her novel.

“I just looked at that mother deer from one mother to another, wondering, ‘how are you going to keep those two babies alive?’ It was so beautiful and poignant and I just grabbed my journal and wrote it all down,” she said. “I knew right away, it was going to be rooted in something deep inside of me, around family and home and loss.”

The book’s main character, Victoria, has been living in Read’s mind for over a decade, and would slowly emerge from scribbles on post-it notes, napkins and the backs of old student papers. Victoria captures the fiercest qualities of the people Read admires most, farmers and the ranchers — and mothers — who show up every day and just do what needs to be done, days tended by toughness and humbleness.

“In her, I wanted to tell that story of people who are stronger than they know they are, who just have a bedrock ability to show up and do what needs to be done,” she said.

The setting of Iola allowed Read to delve deeper into the narrative through a lens of displacement from an ancestral homeland, and the pain that comes with the loss of a home. Read said she was always fascinated by Iola, Cebolla and Sapinero, her imagination caught up in notions of impermanence as entire towns submerged beneath the opaque water of Blue Mesa Reservoir.

She drew from the wealth of historical works already compiled about the Gunnison Valley to bring her fictional story to life. A work of fiction, rather than an accurate recounting of events, allowed Read to create a world that reflected her thematic concerns: place and displacement, home, family, where we turn when those things are lost.

Through the book’s supporting character, Wilson Moon, Read touches on deeper roots of displacement through the forced exodus of the Ute people, original caretakers of the Gunnison Valley.

“I could not write about displacement in the American West without in some way including the indigenous experience, out of respect for that experience,” she said.

Read uses Wilson and Victoria to surface themes of prejudice against both women and indigenous people. Her writing questions the way in which cultural norms and cultural notions of “progress” alienates people and destroys lives, she said.

“It's about digging down and finding our strength and resilience in the face of challenge, and it's about connecting and caring for — and feeling humbled in — the natural world.”

“Go as a River” is being published in 34 countries and translated into 30 languages. The release party for the book will be held at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts on Feb. 27. The pre-event reception to celebrate local authors begins at 6 p.m. and Read’s talk and later book signing begins at 7 p.m.

"My head is absolutely spinning, because I never, ever, anticipated this on any level,” she said. “I'm not taking any of this lightly, I'm really stunned by it all.”

(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)