Go as a River: A Novel

This part of the book depicts the complex impact of Displacement, Relocation, and Place Identity through Victoria’s move to Paonia. Like the trees with “every bare branch reaching for a new piece of sky” (198), Victoria must adapt and stretch her identity to thrive in her new surroundings. This is a painful process that takes time, and the need to hibernate and rebuild inner strength and resilience is symbolized by Victoria’s decision to cut away each peach bud on her trees for the first two years so that they will focus instead on growing strong roots in their new soil. Despite her new location, Victoria remains intensely connected to her past losses, and this ongoing dynamic is symbolized by her nightmare of losing Baby Blue in a dark abyss. The loss of security and safety that she undergoes during her displacement is emphasized through her newfound understanding of Wil’s pain as he endured forced nomadism and interloper status, for she realizes, “When no place will receive you, everywhere becomes a kind of nowhere, all ground as uncertain as in my frightening dream” (203). The tragic story that the realtor tells her of the breakdown of the Harding family who once owned her new house echoes her own family’s dissolution due to many unforeseen pressures, including the conscription to war, the forced relocation, and her own escape from the town’s ingrained bigotry. Additionally, Victoria considers the displacement that her son must feel, knowing that he himself was abandoned and removed from his family and home. To articulate this complex tapestry of philosophical musings, Read weaves multiple tales of displacement and identity throughout the narrative, deepening the novel’s examination of the complex relationship between homeland and identity.

These chapters also develop the theme of Grief as a Journey, for Victoria builds a new future that is still steeped in her lost family’s legacy, clinging for years to a form of mingled grief and hope for her lost child. She therefore hovers between the past and the future, unable to move on but not remaining stagnant either. She recognizes that grief can dictate a person’s life, as exemplified by Uncle Og, Seth, her father, and Ruby-Alice. The moment when she buys new sheets for her bedroom and stops sleeping on the couch is a crucial turning point in her grieving process, for Victoria demonstrates the resilience and strength to move through grief rather than becoming solely defined by it. This choice to move forward is also exemplified by her new connection with Zelda and Ed. Zelda’s vivacity and engagement with current events draw Victoria into the lives of the living, a stark contrast to her solitary existence and silent connection to the dead and the lost. However, despite these improvements, Victoria’s inability to fully let go of the past compels her to hope for a miraculous reconnection with her lost son, and the enduring nature of this hope is symbolized through the stone monument that she creates on the boulder in the meadow as the years continue to pass. Thus, she negotiates a balance between the two worlds: between guarding a memorial to the past and moving forward into a new future.

Read further develops the novel’s intention to explore different experiences of Female Identity and Motherhood, for Victoria’s own decision to give up her child contrasts powerfully with Zelda’s backstory of enduring six miscarriages and finally resigning herself to a childless life. Likewise, Victoria’s imaginings of the other mother, Inga, contrast greatly with her own life experiences. As the novel brings its many philosophical threads closer to a fully realized conclusion, the narratives of these three mothers act as foils to one other, emphasizing that each woman is shaped by her relationship to motherhood, whether she has children or not. Victoria carries the burden of the guilt for her decision to abandon Baby Blue in order to save him, while by contrast, Zelda does not blame herself for the loss of her unborn children. While Zelda feels the loss of her dead children by imagining them “being silly together and wrestling like puppies” (232), she nonetheless invests her energy into creating a good life with her husband Ed and engaging in politics and ideas. Due to their different journeys of grief, Zelda’s current existence is not based on her past losses, whereas Victoria’s life is now defined by the losses she sustained as a young woman. She therefore returns year after year to the place of her son’s abandonment, and she ruminates for years on what the other mother might be like and what her son might be like. Victoria describes the feeling like a weight that “press[es] on my heart” (235). The setting of the boulder monument in the clearing therefore acts as a liminal space between Victoria’s past and present self, revealing her progression through the different stages of grief and motherhood. The appearance of the note in the circle is a deus ex machina event through which the novel explores a different narrative of motherhood, and it also allows Victoria a chance to heal her grief by re-entering her role as a mother with the hard-earned wisdom and experience of a lifetime.