A review by andrewspink
Ga als een rivier by Shelley Read

adventurous emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

"A woman is more than only a container for children and sorrow". This sentence,  near the end of the book, sums up a lot of what it is about. There is a lot of sorrow in the book, a lot connected to children, but in the end, this book is more about motherhood. There is also a lot about racism and the genocide committed by European Americans on native Americans, and a reminder that that went on until relatively recently (and of course the attitudes are still there). Those sections make for difficult reading, but it is good to remind everyone of those facts, especially given the efforts of some Americans to rewrite history.
Parts of the book were a little overly sentimental for my taste, but that was compensated for by having a botanist as an important (albeit secondary) character.