---
product_id: 339068701
title: "The Cold Millions: A Novel Paperback – October 5, 2021"
brand: "jess walter"
price: "$19.23"
currency: USD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 12
url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/339068701-the-cold-millions-a-novel-paperback-october-5-2021
store_origin: US
region: United States of America
---

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

**Brand:** jess walter
**Price:** $19.23
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Cold Millions: A Novel Paperback – October 5, 2021 by jess walter
- **How much does it cost?** $19.23 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.us](https://www.desertcart.us/products/339068701-the-cold-millions-a-novel-paperback-october-5-2021)

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- jess walter enthusiasts

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Great historical fiction about Spokane labor into days
  

*by A***L on Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2024*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    A rollicking story about the wild early the Pacific Northwest in 1909 and the origins of the IWW.
  

*by M***S on Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2021*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    A superb book
  

*by K***R on Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2024*

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.

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*Product available on Desertcart United States of America*
*Store origin: US*
*Last updated: 2026-02-27*