Memory and Place in Go as a River: How Landscapes Hold the Past

Thematic Claim

In Go as a River, Shelley Read argues that landscapes are not passive backdrops but active repositories of memory and identity. The drowned town of Iola and the ever-flowing Gunnison River embody how place holds both joy and pain, and how people carry their home places within them even after physical loss. Through Victoria Nash’s journey, the novel suggests that memory is not erased by displacement but transformed into resilience and renewal. Landscapes shape who we become, and in turn, we carry them forward, storied by all they gave and stole.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

The Drowned Town: Memory as Irreversible Imprint

The Prologue establishes the core tension: Iola, Colorado, now lies beneath Blue Mesa Reservoir, created by damming the Gunnison River. The narrator—Victoria—rejects the sanitized official story of a heroic water project. Instead, she insists on the personal story of irrevocable loss. She recalls the town’s vibrant life: the train whistles at 9:22, 2:05, 5:47, and the gnarled peach tree bearing the sweetest fruit. The graveyard was moved to a hill, but the rest was systematically drowned. She concludes that the landscapes of our youths create us permanently, and that joy and pain do not wash away. This opening directly states the novel’s central claim: place imprints memory indelibly, and no flood can erase it.

Uprooting and Carrying On: Place as Interior Landscape

Chapter 17 (corresponding to Outline chapter “Seventeen”) shows Victoria physically leaving Iola after the death of Ruby-Alice Akers. She must uproot her beloved peach trees and transplant them to Paonia. The act of digging out the trees leaves “open wounds” in the orchard, and Victoria feels the land’s pain of extraction. Yet she also recognizes that the land endures, reclaiming itself over time. During Ruby-Alice’s funeral, the community gathers at the Iola cemetery, singing “In the Sweet By-and-By”—a ritual that binds memory to place. Victoria realizes she cannot picture her future, but she knows she must trust her next step. She packs an old basket with her mother’s Bible, Daddy’s flannel shirts, and Ruby-Alice’s quilts—physical tokens of a lost home. Even after driving away, she stops to take one last look at “the place that made me.” This sequence dramatizes how memory becomes internal: the land is left behind, but its emotional architecture travels with Victoria.

Reunion at the Reservoir: Reclaiming Memory and Hope

The novel’s final chapter (Outline chapter “Twenty-Six”) brings Victoria to Blue Mesa Reservoir to meet her son Lukas for the first time since his birth. She stands where Iola now lies submerged, reflecting on her love for Wil and the painful choices that led to this moment. She carries a twig of peach blossoms—a symbolic link to the orchard of her past. As Lukas walks toward her across the pebbled shore, the ground that holds them becomes a bridge between what was lost and what is possible. The reunion does not erase the drowning of Iola; rather, it honors that loss while opening a door to hope. Victoria’s willingness to walk forward, trusting the ground, echoes the river’s forward movement that Wil taught her: “Go as a river.” Memory here is not an anchor that drags her down but a current that carries her onward.

Character and Symbol Connections

Victoria Nash as Carrier of Place

Victoria’s character arc is inseparable from the fate of Iola. She is the novel’s repository of memory: she recalls the train whistles, the taste of peaches, and the faces of townsfolk. Even after moving to Paonia, she returns each August to the clearing in the Big Blue wilderness to place a stone in a circle—a ritual that memorializes her son and her loss. This stone circle becomes a physical marker of memory, a way to make the invisible visible. Her decision to invite Lukas home shows that she has integrated her past rather than suppressed it.

Wilson Moon and the River

Wilson Moon, Victoria’s lost love, embodies the principle of going as a river. Though he dies before the main narrative, his teaching echoes throughout: “Flowing forward against obstacle was not my whole story,” Victoria reflects. Wil’s Indigenous heritage, hinted at but never fully articulated, connects to a deeper history of displacement—one that Zelda Cooper explicitly names when she says, “Think of the Utes.” Wil’s absence makes him a haunting presence, but his river philosophy gives Victoria a framework for holding memory without being consumed by it.

The Peach Tree and the River as Symbols

The peach tree, especially the old gnarled one bearing the sweetest fruit, symbolizes the rootedness of memory. When Victoria uproots the trees and moves them to Paonia, she demonstrates that memory can be transplanted if carefully nurtured. The river, meanwhile, symbolizes both loss (the flooding of Iola) and continuity (its relentless flow). The epilogue shows Victoria by the river, finally at peace: “Now I am ready,” she says, echoing the Annie Dillard epigraph. The river has become a witness to her life, holding all that has passed.

The Stone Circle: Ritual and Remembrance

Victoria’s annual ritual of placing a stone in the clearing (first referenced in Outline chapter “Nineteen”) is a deliberate act of memory. Each stone represents a year or a blessing. The circle grows over time, mirroring how memory accretes. This symbol resists the erasure that the reservoir represents; it is Victoria’s personal monument, built not by governments but by hand and intention.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses a simple, sentimental view of place. Victoria feels guilty about leaving Iola—she apologizes to the land for the extraction of her trees. She also grapples with the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, a parallel that Zelda forces her to confront. The evacuation of Iola repeats a pattern of erasure that Wil’s ancestors experienced. Victoria’s memory of Wil is bittersweet because his death and her forced separation from her son are tied to racial prejudice and class injustice.

Moreover, Victoria’s own relationship to home is ambivalent. She loves Iola, but it was also a place of loneliness and loss—her mother’s early death, her father’s grief, Seth’s abuse. She does not romanticize the town; she acknowledges its sadness. The novel suggests that memory is not selective: it holds the whole, the good and the bad, and that we must learn to carry both.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the Prologue establish the connection between memory and place?
The Prologue opens with an imagined view of what lies at the bottom of Blue Mesa Reservoir. Victoria describes her farm and hometown of Iola now submerged, but insists that the joys and pain of a place do not wash away when floodwaters rise. She states that “the landscapes of our youths create us,” directly asserting that place permanently shapes identity.

2. What role does the peach tree play in Victoria’s process of leaving Iola?
The peach tree represents both rootedness and resilience. When Victoria must transplant the orchard to Paonia, the physical act of digging up the trees feels like a wound. Yet she also believes that if her trees can survive in new soil, so can she. The tree becomes a tangible link between her past and future, a living memory that can be moved and nurtured.

3. In what ways does the reunion with Lukas at Blue Mesa Reservoir symbolize reconciliation with the past?
The reunion takes place at the reservoir that covers Iola, making the setting itself a symbol of what was lost. Victoria carries a twig of peach blossoms, connecting her son to the orchard of his ancestors. As she and Lukas walk toward each other, she trusts the ground to hold them—an act of faith that the past can support a new beginning rather than consume it.

4. How does the novel address the complexity of displacement beyond Victoria’s personal story?
The novel includes Zelda’s remark about the forced removal of the Utes, which forces Victoria to situate her own loss within a larger history of colonial erasure. Wil’s unspoken Indigenous background further deepens this theme. The book suggests that the flooding of Iola repeats a pattern that has occurred for centuries, and that memory must acknowledge these larger injustices.

5. What does the stone circle ritual reveal about Victoria’s evolving relationship to memory?
The stone circle is a yearly ritual of remembrance for her son. Over time, the act of placing a stone becomes less painful and more intentional. It transforms her grief into a steady practice, showing that memory does not have to be a burden—it can be a deliberate act of connection and blessing. The ritual mirrors the layering of time that Victoria observes in the forest, where all stages of life coexist.