Go as a River: A Novel

This chapter uses the epistolary form of a letter to convey Inga’s version of events from 1949 to 1970, the time between Victoria’s decision to abandoning her baby and the current time frame in the last chapters of the story. Lukas’s childhood and young adulthood is thus revealed through the perspective of his adoptive mother, extending the novel’s theme of Female Identity and Motherhood. Unlike Zelda, who wants a child but cannot have one, Inga is a reluctant mother who does not wish for a child but ends up with two boys due to circumstances beyond her control. Her husband dictates his desire for two male children, and Inga’s pregnancy was a demand of the marriage that she had entered into while still unaware of her husband’s bullish nature. Like Victoria, Inga enters motherhood as result of her own naiveté, charmed by the attentions of a young man without considering the consequences of building a life with him. Such circumstances are fraught with unforeseen sacrifices, for just as Inga gives up her dream of becoming a writer in order to become a mother, Victoria loses Wil and the security of her family home. The novel uses the trope of motherly sacrifice to highlight the instinctual choices that mothers must often make to protect their children.

Both Inga and Victoria experience dislocation from the landscapes of their youth, and this dynamic profoundly affects their sense of place identity. Inga is from Ohio but ends up moving with Paul to Durango, Colorado, which she characterizes as being “more antiquated and lonesome than I could possibly bear” (247). Like Victoria, she finds solace in natural places, such as the Animus River. And like Zelda, Inga saves her own sanity by refusing to wallow in the loss of her dreams and homeland, instead investing herself in her relationship with her two sons: the lives that surround her in the present moment. From her experience of the importance of childhood places, Inga encourages her sons’ connection to nature, such as the cottonwood tree in their backyard and the Animus River. She takes Lukas back to the mountains in which she found him in without telling him about the significance of the place. Lukas’s own connection with nature is demonstrated to be a comfort to him, for it nurtures his identity, and the author weaves echoes of Wil into the boy’s personality as he returns to the river whenever he is having trouble with his adoptive father or brother. Lukas’s bond with the landscape of his youth parallels Victoria’s own connection with nature as well, demonstrating the link between them despite their long separation. For Inga, the meadow on the mountain where she discovered Lukas is “a place beyond all other places” (254), revealing her love of Lukas through the motif of places and maps.

In addition, Inga’s epistolary narrative further develops the novel’s theme of The Damaging Legacy of Racism, for Lukas’s darker skin color and looks, which he inherits from his father, brings him a measure of pain through the prejudices of those around him. The childhood anecdote of being called a “half-breed,” and his difficulty in making friends and being bullied at school, all serve to convey the pain of racism that Lukas is forced to bear. When he learns the truth of his mysterious origins, he is devastated, and as Inga relates, “his face fell further into confusion and anguish until the cheerful young man who had walked in the front door was replaced with a version in melted wax” (261). The revelation of his mysterious origins shakes his sense of identity and leads him to reactively join the army in order to regain the sense of belonging that he loses with Inga’s admission.

The novel expands its exploration of the effect of cultural biases and circumstances on individual lives by depicting the effect of war on young men. In this chapter, the Vietnam War alters the trajectory of both Lukas and his brother Max’s lives. Max’s rejection from the army for medical reasons signifies to him his unfitness as a man. Lukas’s decision to join the army without him intensifies Max’s sense of loneliness, which he attempts to remedy with drugs and women, “wearing a drunken girl like a desperate sort of blanket” (265), and this path leads to the eventual overdose that claims his life. When Lukas returns from the war, he also transforms from a boy into a man, more stoic and disciplined. However, he still considers himself a man without a place, which is the legacy of Victoria and Inga’s choices. However, the compelling and humble voice of Inga’s letter within the framework of the longer, decades-long narrative indicates that she, Victoria, and Lukas have all been shaped by a history of cultural biases and circumstances that are out of their individual control.