The Cold Millions

The November selection for the Barnes & Noble Book Club was The Cold Millions by Jess Walter. I must admit that I really struggled with this because the subject matter was not particularly interesting to me and I found Walter's prose to be unnecessarily flowery. I picked it up and put it down again multiple times and barely got it finished before the live Q&A with the author on Tuesday. This sweeping historical novel, based on actual events, is set in the Pacific Northwest in 1909 and follows two orphan brothers from Montana who ride the rails looking for itinerant work. Gregory "Gig" and Ryan "Rye" Dolan end up in Spokane and get caught up the free speech demonstrations by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or Wobblies as they are more commonly known. Gig, the elder brother, is fiery and idealistic and and ends up in jail, along with hundreds of others, for giving a speech during a riot. Rye, desperate to get Gig released, becomes a pawn for an eccentric group of characters (both real and fictional) who use him for their own ends, including a wealthy industrialist hoping to eradicate the unions from his businesses, a vaudeville showgirl with competing alliances, a hard-boiled assassin out to prove he is still up for the job, a double-crossing anarchist with plans of his own, a Pinkerton detective who is not who he appears to be, and a union activist who happens to be 19 and pregnant. Will Gig survive the beatings and hunger strikes in prison with his idealism in tact? Will Rye sell his soul to save Gig? Will the unions do anything to change the inequality between the wealthy few and the cold millions who struggle to survive? It sounds like it would be a compelling read and most people in our virtual discussion thought it was. Unfortunately, I did not. There are a bewildering number of characters and the narrative alternates between too many different POVs. I sometimes found it difficult to keep all of them straight, especially all of the minor characters meant to provide color rather than advance the plot (I sometimes have the same problem with Dickens and Hugo). I was not very invested in any of the characters because they are kept at such a distance (maybe it is due to the aforementioned flowery prose) so it is hard to sympathize with any of them. I actually found Rye, the main protagonist, to be quite unappealing because he is so passive. He is merely swept along by the actions of other characters without really taking a stand and I was a bit disappointed with the epilogue because he seems to benefit from the labor movement throughout his life without much involvement. In fact, I thought the ending was anticlimactic after the slog to get through it but I appreciate the author's comment in our discussion about wanting to demonstrate that the struggle still continues today. I usually love historical fiction but this just didn't do it for me. I am clearly in the minority so I recommend reading it for yourself if the topic sounds interesting to you.

Note:  The Barnes & Noble Book Club is taking the month of December off and will return with a new selection in January.