The Big Both Ways [Hardcover]

John Straley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2008

It's 1935. Jobs are scarce. Yet Slippery Wilson walks off his job at a logging camp afer a gruesome accident kills a coworker. He's headed for Seattle with his savings and plans to buy a piece of farmland and be his own boss. When he stops to help a woman get her car out of a ditch, his life takes a serious detour. The woman is Ellie Hobbs, an anachist from the docks of Seattle who watches out for her young neice and dreams of flying planes. But right now she's got a busted nose and has just stuffed a dead man's body into the trunk of her car. So begins the action that will take Slip, Ellie, her neice, and her noisy yellow bird on a heart-stopping adventure up the Inside Passage from Puget Sound to Alaska. They travel by dory to stay off the roads, and are followed not only by union men out for revenge but by a dogged Seattle police detective who recently lost his wife and is looking for a new life of his own. A gripping period crime story, THE BIG BOTH WAYS incorporates actual events and real places.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this gripping tale of survival, betrayal and murder set in the Pacific Northwest in 1935 from Straley (Cold Water Burning), Slip Wilson is just trying to find work, food and a little justice when he hooks up with a bottle-blonde, Ellie Hobbes, who drags him into her edgy, ragtag life. At the last minute, Ellie, a notorious red union organizer who faces mounting problems with antiunion forces, and her young niece hop aboard the same rickety boat Slip is escaping on that's traveling from Seattle to Juneau. The odd trio barely catches a breath as weather, hunger, a Seattle homicide detective and a revenge-seeking gang of thugs hound them all the way up the Inside Passage. Ellie isn't big on explanations, so Slip isn't sure until nearly the end of their journey if she's a heroine or a scoundrel. Straley's beautifully understated narrative, vivid sense of place and unapologetic, unadorned characters make this a riveting, unpredictable ride. (May)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Straley, author of the Cecil Younger series, starring a contemporary Alaskan private investigator, turns here to Pacific Northwest history, with a rich tale of labor strife in the 1930s. After quitting his logging job, Slip Wilson sets off for Seattle, hitching a ride with a bleached blond in a big car. Trouble? Of course, especially given the body in the car’s trunk. Soon enough, there’s another body, and Slip, Ellie (the blond), her niece, and a yellow bird are on the lam, sailing a dory up Puget Sound’s Inside Passage, from Seattle to Alaska. What follows is part mystery and part action-adventure tale, as the neophyte sailors battle weather, tides, and unfriendly locals, all the while pursued by a determined Seattle cop on his own kind of lam from a troubled life. Straley hits all the right notes here: vividly detailed scenes evoking the clash between emerging trade unions and more radical advocates of revolution, as well as almost Dickensian vignettes of the working conditions in the canneries and on the waterfronts of the Northwest, meld perfectly with a Jack London–like, man-versus-nature story in which two adults, one child, and one bird, huddled together in a very small boat, attempt to stay afloat and move ever northward. Labor fiction only works if the characters don’t come across as stick figures, singing the union-label song on cue, and Straley nails that, too. Ellie spouts the party line, but she’d rather be Amelia Earhart, and Slip is uncertain about almost everything. If you want to read one novel about the Northwest in the grip of labor unrest, read this one. --Bill Ott

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: Alaska Northwest Books (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882407392
• ISBN-13: 978-0882407395
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,856,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Straley better than ever, May 11, 2008

By 

M. Wheeless (Alaska) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Big Both Ways (Paperback)

With this book Straley has proven he can 'change horses' and still ride. Or, in this case, write. Although I will miss his Cecil Younger character, I found a whole new slew of characters to like in this new book. Setting it in 1935 is unique because Alaska barely existed in the eyes of the world prior to 1941 and the outbreak of WWII. The characters in this book, the misfits and the people they run into on their escape up the Southeast coast of Alaska are so 'real', I felt like I knew them all. People credit the gold miners with 'settling' Alaska but it was every bit the others as well, the bartenders, storekeepers, cannery workers, fishermen, and loggers, the everyday folks who people Straley's books who really pioneered Alaska. Hats off, John. It was a great read!! Keep 'em coming!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read and a great ride, April 8, 2008

By 

Dewey (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big Both Ways (Paperback)

Once again, John Straley takes you into the misty, wild realm of Southeast Alaska in a way that few authors can. This time it's with a new cast of characters easily as rich and interesting as the old crew of Cecil, Todd and the rest. Straley fills a leaky dory with a cargo of innocence, strength, tenderness and hope then sets it on a journey as unpredictable as the waters it travels. A clever mix of mystery, action, history and heart, this story will pull you along with each stroke of the oars and each stroke of Straley's masterful pen. I loved this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Straley Yet, June 3, 2009

By 

Warlen Bassham (Bothell, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Big Both Ways (Paperback)

John Straley is one of my favorite authors, ever.

I was hooked by The Woman Who Married a Bear. I loved The Curious Eat Themselves. I've read every word he's ever had published in book form, and have a hard time waiting between books.

This last wait was the worst. It stretched on forever.

It was worth it.

This one is the best yet.

We lose Cecil Younger, but we gain four fascinating characters that we'll never forget. Five, if you count the bird.

Slip is a logger who quits when a friend of his dies high in a tree. He is going to 'retire' to a quiet life of farming. Or so he thinks.

In reality, his life is going to spiral around and down like something gross being flushed down a toilet. Every time he tries to escape the latest horrific event, everything just gets worse.

Ellie is his love interest, if you can call it that. He's attracted to her, but is also more than a little scared of her. It's more fascination than love, but just as powerful. She gets him into new legal jams twice as fast as he can get out of the last jam. [Death follows her, and therefore Slip, like a lonely puppy.]

Ellie's fetching niece, Annabelle, helps keep him interested, as in some strange way does Annabelle's bird, a cockatiel named Buddy.

A Seattle detective named George is after all of them, because he is intent on bringing Ellie and Slip to justice, not much caring what happens to the kid and the bird.

That's all I'm going to say about plot, because the story line, while strong, is not what makes this book 'cook.' What lifts it above mere mystery is Straley's magnificent style, his keen insight into what makes characters tick, or not, and his knack for grabbing us where we live emotionally and never letting go.

In the end, what matters is not who is or who is not guilty of murders galore, but who is or is not truly human. That's always been true in Straley, and this time around it's truer than ever.

I stand in awe.