The Cold Millions

 

The Cold Millions

By Jess Walter

This has got to be, by far, the best book I've ever read about organized labor. Set in early 1900s Spokane, Washington, the book tells the story of the labor movement's struggle to earn the right to organize. At the heart of the story are two brothers, Gig and Rye Dolan, drifters who, like so many, are exploited by millionaires and the job sharks -- who charge $1 for the chance to work -- in their employ. It's an exploitative world that pushes Gig toward the idealistic philosophy of the International Workers of the World. Gig is a Wobbly all the way -- until the reality of jail time and abuse at the hands of police pull back the curtain on just what the IWW is up against. 

Enter Early Reston (if that is his real name). He appears to be a drifter just like the Dolan boys. But, like so much in Spokane, he's not what he seems. He's actually working for a local millionaire, Lem Brand, who has hired him to stir up the community to make the Wobblies look bad and give the local authorities the shred of an excuse they need to run them out of town. Or is he? There's a chance he just likes violence. Meanwhile Rye is swept up in the Wobblies movement in the hopes of freeing his brother as he travels the West with organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Then again, he also has a connection to Brand. So which side is he on? 

It's a web of a plot that reads like a mystery and keeps you turning the pages. In addition, Walter does a lovely job of bringing the characters to life. In between the action, he switches points of view so that you can better understand the perspectives of each of the characters. They seem to breathe -- especially Rye.

But there is a larger musing here. At its heart, the book is about the ways in which individuals shape history and the way history shapes individuals. Rye, who later in the book takes up Tolstoy's War and Peace, reflects on how history feels like a roar of motion when you are caught in its flow but something else entirely when you are on the outside looking in. Is it better to be a rabble rouser on the vanguard, sacrificing comfort in the name of eventual progress? Or is it better to view such actors from afar, enjoying what one can from life in anonymity? Rye seems to take the latter tack. But, unbeknownst to him, it was an act of sacrifice and nobility that allowed him to take that path in the first place. 

In the Midst of Winter

 In the Midst of Winter 

By Isabelle Allene

I am returning to this book a month or so after reading it, so the details are a bit fuzzy. Here's what I remember: The book brings together three people from very different backgrounds. There is Richard, an academic from NYU whose alcoholic past resulted in tragedy and a subsequent life of obsessive attention to routine. He is also the landlord and recruiter of Lucia, a lecturer at NYU with an unfortunate level of personal knowledge of Pinochet's regime in Chile. And then there is Evelyn, who immigrated illegally from Guatemala -- and who brings the trio together when she shows up at Richard's door after a small fender bender. The issue? Turns out there is a body in the trunk of the car. 

Evelyn didn't do anything, of course. The car, and the murder, belongs to her employer. But she's scared and finds sympathetic ears in Richard and Lucia. So they embark on a plan to get rid of the body, an "adventure" that brings them closer together. In the process, Richard's heart -- frozen with loathing for himself and the world -- thaws, which is, you know, ironic given that the book takes place in an epic blizzard. Not to give too much away, but he falls in love with Lucia.

This was certainly a good read. But I'm not sure exactly what the point was. The plot seemed real thin and kind of beside the point. It was almost as if the author created these characters and then had to come up with some weird, far-fetched way to bring them together. Also, Richard's character seemed altogether unrealistic. One moment he's ornery. The next he's head over heals in love. I don't think that's how humans work. But what do I know?

Barn 8

 Barn 8

By Deb Olin Unferth

To be clear, this book was given to me as something of a joke. It arrived near by birthday from my brother as a reference to the chickens we have been keeping -- and losing to local wildlife -- since the fall. He also gave me a set of toy construction equipment to assuage my yen for a mini excavator, with which I could no doubt create excellent mountain biking trails. So I wasn't expecting much. Then again, the cover was pretty great.

The book is about, well, chickens. Specifically: egg layers caught in our pretty awful industrial farming system. It is also about the humans who want to end this system. One of them turns out to be Janey, who arrives in the midwest at the tail end of her high school career after learning that her mother, who had claimed not to know who her father was, very much did know who Janey's father was. So Janey decided to go visit him. He's a bit of a...letdown. Even more so when, just as Janey is about to return home to New York City, Janey's mother dies in a car accident. Leaving Janey to spend the rest of her high school year in Iowa. Janey thereafter distinguishes herself from "old" Janey and is in many ways her opposite. Gone are her dreams of attending college or of making anything of herself whatsoever. She seems to have lost all of her old ambition. Until.

She takes a job as an inspector of factory farms. She gets it because her supervisor, Cleveland, was once babysat by Janey's mother, who looms large in her mind. Cleveland also happens to be having something of a career crisis. She finds herself stealing chickens from farms and leaving them on the doorstep of the local anti-ag organization. When Janey learns of this, inspiration strikes and they hatch a plan to remove about a million birds from a local factory farm. This brings in a number of other characters, including Annabelle, a former activist who left the movement for untold reasons, and Dill, her former co-conspirator who also seems washed up. Together, they pull together hundreds of volunteers to carry out the mission, which does not go well. Blame it on barn 8. In between all this, the author waxes poetic about the state of the earth and the unsung marvels of the ordinary chicken.

All told, it wasn't a bad read. It was pretty funny in places. But it seemed to take forever to get to the action. And the whole book was dripping with so much foreshadowing that actually learning about that action felt anti-climactic. But -- chickens!