Go as a River: A Novel

“But I’ve come to understand how the exceptional lurks beneath the ordinary, like the deep and mysterious world beneath the surface of the sea.”

The motif of rivers and water as a symbolic force that flows through people’s lives and links them is used to connect Victoria, Wil, and eventually, Lukas. Victoria learns from Wil how to see the truth of things behind the false narratives of bigotry and prejudice that her community has perpetrated. The world beneath the water is therefore demonstrated as being portrayed as being full of the metaphorical sediment of life, representing all the memories and connections that Victoria makes and carries into her future as a legacy of wisdom.

“He would teach me how true a life emptied of all but its essentials could feel and that, when you got down to it, not much mattered outside the determination to go on living. If he had told me this then, I wouldn’t have had the ability to believe him. But time pulls our strings.”

Although the event of Wil’s murder happens early in the novel, his legacy is relayed through Victoria’s flashbacks as she spends a lifetime reflecting on what their relationship meant to her. Victoria’s character arc of survival and growth through starvation, isolation, and displacement is the “essence” of her story. The decades-long time span of the events in the story builds the idea that time reveals meanings and wisdom that cannot be understood without experience.

“I felt as the explorers I had once studied in school must have when they glimpsed a far and mysterious shore from their seemingly eternal sea. Suddenly the Magellan of my own interior, I knew not what I had discovered. I lay my head on Wil’s broad shoulder and wondered where and who he’d come from, and how long a drifter ever stayed in one place.”

The motif of maps and places is used to depict Victoria’s growing empathy and self-discovery. When she meets Wil, she awakens to a part of herself that is brave, and she also connects profoundly to her own feminine identity. The reference to Magellan, an explorer who is famous for circumnavigating the globe, foreshadows how far Victoria will travel from her family life and what she has known, both internally and externally, even as it implies that her life will come full circle.

“No one in the clapboard church that day could have predicted that within three months, politicians far across the world would decide to send bombs falling on a Hawaiian harbor that we had never heard of and the result would be the snatching away of Ogden and Jimmy to war.”

The novel portrays the significance of larger historical events on the trajectory of individual lives. The events of the story take place after World War II and during the Vietnam War, both of which impact the characters’ lives. For example, the impact of Ogden’s war injuries has repercussions that affect the breakdown of the Nash family and emphasize the harmful effects of displacement, racism, and violence.

“The war did to Ogden just what that train had done to Mr. Massey’s sleek automobile: taken something of unique beauty and promise and crushed it. One year later, the accident that stole Cal, Vivian, and my mother did the same to my family. I learned from a young age the tenacity of ruin.”

Every character in the novel undergoes a journey of grief, and the way that each person deals with that grief determines their ability to heal and move on. For Uncle Ogden, his injury and experience of loss through violence “crushes” the “beauty” out of him, and he becomes a mean-tempered man whose addiction to alcohol renders him unrecognizable from his former self. In this way, Victoria loses multiple members of her family at a young age, and if it weren’t for Wil, she might have ended up stuck in grief like her father and brother.

“‘That’s enough,’ Daddy commanded. I didn’t know whether it was the bigotry or nastiness or just the sounds of their voices he couldn’t abide.

I wanted to stand and declare to them that they didn’t know a damn thing about Wilson Moon. Already I felt I possessed Wil somehow, that the men at my table, though kin, meant less to me now than he did.”

Victoria slowly becomes aware of the bigotry and racism of her brother Seth and many of the townspeople in Iola as she discovers more about Wil and his life. Her fast and intense link to Wil changes her perspective of the people that surround her, and she becomes sensitive to their hateful speech and behavior. Her growing awareness becomes apparent in her first-person narration of her discoveries, which foreshadow her escape into the wilderness.

“But I came to understand that she, like I, like women throughout the ages, knew the value of employing silence as a guard dog to her truth. By showing on the surface only a small fraction of her interior, a woman gave men less to plunder. I feigned indifference to the subject of Wilson Moon, although my veins buzzed liked electrical cords at his mention.”

The simile of Victoria’s mother’s stoicism as a fierce and protective dog highlights the danger of being a woman in a world of men. Victoria adopts her mother’s strategy to protect herself by hiding her true feelings and self from the men in her life, and this leads her to become a protective and isolated adult, but it also keeps her child alive. The intensity of her feelings for Wil is conveyed through the aural image of the “buzz” of her veins, which carry blood to her heart.

“If I could have moved around the house and done my chores closed behind my own personal door, I would have. I was a girl alone in a house of men, quickly becoming a woman. It was like blossoming in a bank of snow.”

As a teenager, Victoria hides herself away from her male family members, whom she perceives as threats. The metaphor of the “personal door” she closes inside herself keeps her protected from the males in her life, but it also leaves her estranged from her female identity, which she slowly uncovers by loving Wil and becoming a mother. The hostility of the environment of her youth is conveyed through the comparison of her younger self as a flower blooming in the harshness of winter.

“Mother’s stern restrictions bound his unruliness in forced obedience, but his penchant for menace struggled just below the surface like a man in a straitjacket.”

Seth is characterized as a violent and threatening antagonist, and Victoria lives in fear of him until she finally faces him in adulthood. The death of their mother leaves Victoria unprotected from Seth’s rage when she is a child, as her mother was one of the few people who could suppress Seth’s outbursts. The volatility of his nature is personified as a wild, separate entity that constantly struggles to break free.

“The new Ogden bore no resemblance to the old, let alone to the only president I had ever known. It was not until long after both Roosevelt and Og had passed away and wheelchairs were no longer made of wood that I saw one of only two known photographs of the president in his chair, and I wondered how many war veterans, legless and miserable like Og, might have suffered a little bit less had the president not hidden his chair in shame.”

The novel explores The Damaging Legacy of Racism and other forms of prejudice through Victoria’s growing awareness of these aspects of the town. As Victoria opens to Wil’s lived experience of racism, she begins to gain new empathy in her perspective, and this shift allows her to better understand her family, including her Uncle Ogden. The context of the story therefore highlights historical issues of representation, such as that of disabled veterans.

“I was speechless. I had never seen an Indian before. All I knew was what I learned in school about their violence against my grandparents’ generation as the whites tried to civilize the West, and how the government had long ago relocated them where they wouldn’t cause more trouble. I remembered Daddy’s and Seth’s remarks the night before about Wil being Mexican. His being Indian would garner even more disdain. I simply couldn’t believe it was true.”

Victoria’s ignorance and bigotry is portrayed as a systemic issue passed on to her by older generations and systems of education and governance. Her growth from ignorance to empathy is highlighted through her first-person perspective of what she has heard and seen as a child. Furthermore, the ignorance of her parents, such as her father’s assumption that Wil is Mexican, reveals the impact of inherited bias on a person’s outlook.

“Before limping into the kitchen to prepare breakfast, I returned Og’s crutches. I leaned them against the wall outside his closed bedroom door and considered him in a new way: how it must feel to be Ogden, one leg lost to war, the other without foot or use after gangrene, a once agile body trapped in the confines of a chair. Since the day he’d returned from war, Og’s fury was surely the lion concealing the lamb of his sorrow.”

Victoria’s self-knowledge and insight increases as she grows in life experience and benefits from Wil’s influence. She and Uncle Ogden have a symbolic moment of healing that allows Victoria to see him from a new perspective. The metaphorical comparison of his angry exterior to a fierce lion and his inner sadness to a soft lamb demonstrates Victoria’s increasingly nuanced understanding of emotions, for she becomes more aware of the various ways in which different people carry their pain.

“I couldn’t reconcile my impression of Wil with the other version of him spreading through the town, that of a menace, a savage, a thief. I wondered how I could possibly discover the truth about him, to know him without the distortion of rumor, spite born of blind bigotry, or my own raw longing. Ruby-Alice Akers was the only outcast I had ever known. I was taught she was a crazy and wild and perilous thing, beyond respect and regard, not unlike Wil in the eyes of Seth, Millie Dunlap, Martindell, and others.”

Victoria’s clear and direct narration reveals her new insight into her own bigotry and its influence on her way of relating to people. Her maturation is demonstrated through her recognition of her physical desire for Wil as another kind of lack of awareness. The comparison between Ruby-Alice and Wil as being "beyond respect and regard” and their mutual status as “outcast” reflects the isolation of the pain of racism and its lack of humanity.

“Making love to Wil felt like arriving somewhere I had been crawling to get to for a very long time. In his arms, I became all the things it had never occurred to me to be before we met. I was beautiful and desirable and even a little dangerous. I was away from the farm overnight, a woman making choices and taking risks rather than an obedient and timid girl.”

One of the major shifts of Victoria’s character occurs through her relationship with Wil, for she shifts from a girl and claims a deeper version of her female identity as she experiences motherhood. When Wil makes her feel seen and “desired,” Victoria discovers new aspects of herself that give her agency in her own life. She is no longer “crawling” somewhere but is standing boldly in a new place, building a new identity for herself.

“As I retreated through her oddly still yard, I wondered if perhaps Ruby-Alice’s constant bicycling was her roaming the day as I roamed the night, searching against all reason for the loved ones she had lost, and I wondered if whatever madness of grief that had infected Ruby-Alice had come to claim me too.”

Victoria’s changing perspective and growing admiration for Ruby-Alice allows her to empathize with her experience of loss. After Wil’s death, Victoria physically searches for him and metaphorically carries the intensity of grief for years. The novel examines different journeys of grief, for while Victoria fears that she will become like Ruby-Alice, the strength of her identity as a mother and Wil’s wisdom pushes her to keep moving forward.

“Unmoored from the attention and judgment of others, I curled into a ball and mourned with an agony I’d never thought possible. Once unleashed, grief’s dark grip held Mother and Cal and Aunt Viv nearly as much as Wil, four thick fingers squeezing my heart like a fist around a sponge, wringing out my tears, my guttural howls. That night I slept deeply, dreamlessly, greedy for refuge.”

The image of a brutal fist gripping Victoria’s vital organs conveys the intensity of her grief upon losing her loved ones. The anguish of her mental state is portrayed as a compounding force that gathers strength and becomes a juggernaut of painful emotion. Victoria, having suffered multiple losses early in life, has a need to find a place of safety and security from the pain of loss that has displaced her.

“A force larger than myself moved me forward, from primal hunger to that initial curious creep out of my bedroom and down the stairs, to eventual regularity and the assumption of my mother’s role as caretaker of the family. I did not choose so much as succumb to necessity.”

Victoria’s response to grief shifts throughout the novel, but she has the instinctual reaction to move through it rather than to remain still. This sense of Grief as a Journey is conveyed through the metaphor of moving through a house. Her initial reaction to grief is shown in her will to survive and continue.

“But then, I swear, Wil appeared at my side. He lifted our baby in the crook of my arm. He pulled my free hand into his, and together we began rubbing our baby’s chest, just as he had done with Ruby-Alice’s flaccid puppy. Gently at first, then vigorously, purposefully, Wil stroked my flat hand over our baby’s heart, turned him and stroked his feathery back, turned him again, rubbing, calling him to life. Wil blew into the tiny blue lips.”

Victoria’s imagination and memory keep Wil present throughout the novel even after his death. The memory of Wil’s wisdom literally saves the lives of Victoria’s child, for she uses his technique of saving the pup in order to help the baby to take its first breaths. Wil’s ethereal presence thus bolsters Victoria as she faces later challenges and obstacles in her life, and the memory of his wisdom ultimately helps her to make choices that lead her back to her lost son.

“We were both mothers now, but where were her fawns? The bushes rustled and her favored offspring emerged, tall and elegant. The fawn eyed me with wise caution as she stepped to her mother’s side. The pair gracefully moved on. The second fawn did not follow. I sat on a boulder and waited. When the weakling never appeared, I sorrowfully hugged Baby Blue more tightly and stumbled on.”

The connection to place and nature is depicted as part of a person’s identity: one that shapes their development through time. The mother deer and the fawns are therefore symbols of the fragility of life and also of motherly instinct. Victoria’s connection to the deer helps her to make a lifesaving choice for her baby, abandoning him to a family that can provide for him when she cannot.

“Falling in love with Wilson Moon had been the most honest act of my life. The unforeseen ripple effects of an honest act do not make the choice less truthful. All one can do, I had learned from Wil, is to meet those ripples—as unimaginable or horrific or beautiful or desperate as they may be—with the best you had. I imagined Baby Blue, a full week older now, grown round and rosy with nutrition. Though my heart ached and sorrow ran like thick tar in my marrow, I knew it had been another honest act to lay my baby down.”

Despite the pain of grief, Victoria is grateful for her relationship with Wil and the strength that she gains from it. The novel demonstrates that tragedy is a realistic aspect of life and focuses on the choices the characters make after facing a loss. The sensual imagery of the statement that “sorrow ran like thick tar in my marrow” highlights the pain of Victoria’s loss. The repetition of the word “honest” also conveys the value of Victoria’s difficult choice, while the image of the baby, “round and rosy with nutrition,” conveys the necessity and strength that can come from sacrifice.

“Wil hadn’t told me about his past, maybe because he missed it too much, or maybe because it didn’t matter anymore. I hadn’t asked questions, but he seemed to me both a child of somewhere and nowhere all at once, his peculiar loveliness perhaps born of his homeland but ripened in the leaving, the resilience required to carry on. I only hoped our baby had the same strength to adapt.”

The ambiguity of Victoria’s view of the pain of Wil’s displacement highlights the complexity of place identity and its effects through time. The novel emphasizes the importance of a character’s resilience in the face of loss and displacement. Like his father, Lukas is destined to be a “child of somewhere and nowhere all at once,” demonstrating the legacy of migration and its impact on family structures.

“Fishermen and a few picnicking families dotted a sandy stretch of the reservoir’s south shore, mistaking the scenery for nature. Surely, they found the new lake scenic, and I might have thought so, too, had I no history here, no knowledge of its artifice and the ruin strewn along its depths.”

The flooding of the city of Iola is portrayed as a painful loss for the people whose families had settled there. Victoria’s perspective of the tourists as “mistaken” conveys her pain at seeing her childhood home underwater. The depiction of the reservoir as a site of “artifice and ruin” also challenges the historical characterization of the dam construction as “progress.”

“Strength, I had learned, was like this littered forest floor, built of small triumphs and infinite blunders, sunny hours followed by sudden storms that tore it all down. We are one and all alike if for no other reason than the excruciating and beautiful way we grow piece by unpredictable piece, falling, pushing from the debris, rising again, and hoping for the best.”

Victoria’s retrospective narration emphasizes the wisdom that she has gained from experience, both her mistakes and her successes. Her connection to the natural world as a guide is highlighted through her use of natural metaphors, which help her to better understand humanity. The value of moving forward through loss is also demonstrated by the metaphor of rising through the debris of organic material.