The Cold Millions: A Novel Paperback – October 5, 2021

I couldn't give this book more praise. Excellent writing and character development. one of the best books I read in recent years, highly recommended.

Author Jess Walter sets his story in the stunning natural environment of the Pacific Northwest in the opening years of the 20th Century. Washington State was one of the last frontiers of the western USA, and a wild place. This was an exploitive and violent time. Saw mill and mine owners and timber barons put workers into dangerous and ill-paid work. And private detective agencies and local cops violently suppressed union and radical meetings.The novel centers around a two fictional characters, Rye and Gig Nolan and a real one, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Rye and Gig are brothers and orphans in their late teens. They ride the rails and work any job they find. They struggle to stay fed, survive another day, and grow into men. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is a militant trade unionist and socialist, barely older than Rye. She’s a legendary figure in labor history as a forceful speaker for the early trade unions, for free speech, and women’s rights. She’s a slight, quite young, and forcefully charismatic woman, the sort of speaker who could talk a drunk into a teetotaler.Walter’s story follows Rye and Gig as they ride the rails through the Northwest. Gig’s character strengthens with hard physical labor, confrontation with corruption and violent cops, imprisonment, and the temptation of bribes from a private detective. His friendship with Elizabeth Gurley forms his character, as they organize public meetings of the International Workers of the World (the IWW, known as the ‘Wobblies’), a radical early union.Walter has a talent for story-telling and for crafting a complex plot. The novel must have been tough to write because it mixes genres: it’s a coming-of-age story about Rye, a picaresque adventure story along the lines of Huckleberry Finn, it’s an historical novel, and also story about the natural environment and it’s partial destruction by industry. More than all of these, this is political novel, a vehicle for a political message about origins and moral force of the trade union movement.Walter’s literary style charmed reviewers. It is busy, richly descriptive and dense with folky expressions, colorful adjectives, and action verbs. Here’s a sample of his style, a single sentence describing a lumber camp:“At their peak, each bustling camp housed more than a thousand men and nearly as many barmen, gamblers, and prostitutes, spread out in fifty or so rough-hewn wooden buildings – saloons, brothels, hotels and casinos, a barracks, chow hall, sawmill, and a sprawl of crib tents where the sorriest played-out jangle girls sat open-legged on dirty cots waiting for men too drunk to climb the brother steps.”This graphic and active style must have been hard to sustain for so many pages. It comes across as excessive. It’s tiring to read through hundreds of pages of well-written but hyper-active, sometimes manic prose.The Cold Millions is occasionally heavy-handed and predictable in pursuing the generic political story. The boss oppresses the working class men who in turn face-down the plump, waistcoat-wearing boss. The owners and bosses are one-dimensional villains; the workers celebrate their bonds of solidarity and friendship at the work site, campfire, and saloon. and bar.There’s some truth to these stereotypes. Workers labored long hours in unsafe working conditions and suffered horrific accidents. The bosses forced the workers to buy their jobs from employment agencies, collecting extra fees. It was a time without rule of law, where the owners hired private detectives to beat-up works and to suppress union meetings. There was no accountability for public violence. For example, in the small town of Centralia, Washington, a few miles from where my wife grew-up, the American Legion, pushed by the lumber barons, attacked the IWW union hall and massacred six members on Armistice Day, 1919.I’m not sure what to conclude from this book. I’m left with questions about Gurley Flynn. What inspired her, who shaped her views, what are the historical origins of her radical ideas? Where are the charismatic women radicals and feminists of our time? There are plenty of radical feminists and professors at Women’s Studies departments today, but I can’t think of a present-day personality to match Gurley Flynn or Emma Goldman.The novel doesn’t help me to understand the sources of the IWW. Trade unionism made sense in an era of hard and dangerous labor and of abusive treatment and financial exploitation by bosses. Where did the radical tradition of the Wobblies and earlier groups like the Molly Maguires originate? Is it something immigrants brought from Sweden and Norway? It seems different from the milder spirit of Scandinavian socialism that pervades Washington State, Oregon, and Minnesota in our times.The consequences of the IWW for the 1920s through the 1970s, is easier to see. The Wobblies opened the way for more moderate groups, like Walter Reuther’s AFL, and later on, the UAW and the Teamsters. Does anything of its spirit survive today? The American union movement has subsided and its remainders represent mainly higher-income manufacturing works. Perhaps the Wobbly heritage belongs to the tiny antifa and anti-globalization groups that riot in Portland, Seattle, and occasionally elsewhere.

It was a little difficult for me, at first - the author's technique of switching to different narrators. Then it all pulled together and - what a story! The cold millions. Very in depth view of real (disgusting, painful) historical events. I plan to read more of this author's work.

I may be a bit late to the party but I still have to toot my horn for Jess Walter and his novel, The Cold Millions.I have had the hard cover moving around my house since it’s release. I think I even pre-ordered it. Not because I was a huge fan of Walter but because he’s a local author and I had read We Live in Water and was absolutely destitute with a book hangover. He owed me something after that gut punch.I’ll admit, I’ve never been much for historical fiction so I just moved that thick pretty book around, and finally placed it on a top shelf that required a ladder to reach.After I got over the churning mix of emotions he stirred up with We Live in Water, and I had forgiven him for the odd hole left in my heart by one particular story, I moved on.The Angel of Rome was the next thing I read by Walter and I was completely smitten. The weaving together of so many stories left me feeling validated in my humanity.Next up was Beautiful Ruins, a work that landed Walter on many summer Top Reads lists a few years ago. At the end scene, I was a solid Walter fan. Not like his PNW references had garnered him a pass, but a solid fan.When the library had The Cold Millions on their audiobook options I jumped to check it out. Over the past week I have gone back and forth from listening to reading and last night—as I stared into the darkness, hands clasped on my chest, covers all tucked in and ears aching from a marathon of earbuds—I finished it.If you’re living in the Spokane area, are from Spokane or know someone here, this book will absolutely transport you back in time. You’ll witness the glittering and grimy Edwardian era in a booming city out west, scraped from the basalt and taken without apology from the peoples who lived here first.An image of social upheaval pulls at the threads of societal fabric, woven with the greed of silver, timber and railroad barons, held fast by the grit, sweat and blood of men and women of little to no means.I won’t spoil it for you but you need to read this book. It’s not too late to give it for Christmas. I’m not even kidding.I was hooked from the first chapter. It’s an eye opener, page turner and will leave you feeling blessed to be wherever you are and bring forth a new appreciation for our city and area and what it took to get here.Jess Walter knocked it out of the park with this one. If you need me, I’ll be nursing a severe book hangover.

Every year our local library has a program called Castro Valley Reads. They provide copies of a book to anyone who signs up, and then they hold discussion groups for a couple of months and end with a visit from the author. This year, the book is The Cold Millions. I honestly would not have chosen this book if it weren't for the program. It is not a subject I am very interested in. However, I thought it was a good book. The descriptions are fairly graphic, and I would assume the research is accurate. I felt that it started out slow, but as the story went on, I got more interested, so the second half of the book was a quicker read than the first half. If you're interested in unions or the history of the northwestern U.S., you would probably like this.

Characters are good. Writing is very good. By the 200th page though, I lost all motivation or attachment to the story line. It's just not that interesting.

Jess Walter is one of the finest writers in America, along with his friend Anthony Doerr. This book is the best example of non-fiction fiction I have read. Thanks, Jess, for sharing with the rest of us!

I read it, I liked it, I'll keep it.

The characters are fascinating and the history well researched, but unobtrusive in a story which is not didactic, but exciting and moving.

Ich mag Jess Walter's Bücher (besonders Beautiful Ruins, Life of American Poets) und habe mich auf das neueste gefreut. Aber leider komme ich nicht in die Handlung rein.

Characters were well drawn and relatable to. Definitely a good read and something different.

My mom loved it for Christmas! Great gift, and she’s really enjoying it!