Go as a River (Affiliate link) by Shelley Read is my favorite book that I read in 2023. It is about the life of Victoria Nash, a young girl growing up on a peach farm in a small town in Colorado. Her mom died when she was 12 and she has been the sole woman on the farm. The book follows her throughout her life as Victoria faces many tough decisions and shows us how hard life can be, especially as a woman in the 1950s and 1960s. I always love a strong female character and Victoria is as strong as they come. She shows us the love of a mother and bravery as she makes hard choices and lives a life that is not the norm in her community.

There is a part of the book where Victoria is living on her own in the Colorado wilderness. She begins to see the way human lives have much in common with animals and plants and the natural world around her. This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately so I really enjoyed this part of the book.

If you are looking for a good, relatively clean read, give Go as a River a try. I don’t think you will be disappointed.