The Cold Millions: Jess Walter is Back, and Really Freakin' Good!

Jess Walter is one of a very few "phone book" writers to me — by that I mean, he could write the phone book and I'd still read him. So a new Jess Walter book is an EVENT. It's been a long wait since his last novel — Beautiful Ruins was 2012! So yeah, The Cold Millions hitting shelves (today!) is a big deal. 

And even more exciting than all that: It's really freakin' good! There are gangsters and anarchists, labor warriors and dirty cops, and a whole lot of anger. In a lot ways, though these events took place more than a century ago, this novel seems like a distant mirror to our current unsettling times.

The story, which takes place in 1909, is about two brothers, Gig, 23, and Rye, 16, "tramping" around the Pacific Northwest, looking for work, and getting swept up in the contentious labor fights of the day. Gig supports the Wobblies — the shorthand name for the members of the new "labor union for all," the Industrial Workers of the World. And Rye is sort of along for the ride. Things go south quickly when they're both arrested as part of a labor rally. Rye has to spend several days in a crowded, disgusting holding cell, not knowing the fate of his older brother. 

Enter Elizabeth Gurley Flynn — 19 years old, beautiful, and an absolute force of nature in the labor movement (and a real person — she cofounded the ACLU!). Flynn takes up the brothers' cause and after Rye is sprung from jail, gets him to travel around the west with her, telling his story of injustice, and fundraising for the Wobblies. Meanwhile, a rich industrialist whose interests (that of becoming MORE wealthy, at the expense of "the cold millions," the labor that makes him rich) are put at risk by the labor unions pulls some strings in the background to try to destroy the movement. Chaos further ensues when an anarchist with allegiance to neither side enters the fray. His only goal is to wreak havoc...and havoc is indeed wrought. 

I loved this book! It's pure reading fun — you can't turn the pages fastest enough here. If you're one of like four people who read Karl Marlantes' long novel Deep River, that came out last year, this is a really good (though much more entertaining) companion piece to that novel, also about the birth of the labor movement in the Pacific Northwest. But Jess Walter really hits the mark here — fascinating characters, a well-told historical story with plenty of resonance to today, and just a lot of fun. This is a favorite of the year!