The Big Both Ways

In this somber, exhilarating period adventure, narrator Barry Press helps listeners empathize with the several lead characters, from an indigent logger to a world-weary woman labor organizer and an orphaned girl and her bird. As they make their way from Seattle to Sitka to Juneau, the story takes on a Mark Twain flavor, but there's murder, too, and union trouble in the Northwest circa 1935. Press's voice adds to the author's portrayals of diverse characters in situations not of their choosing who are burdened with a crime that has a life of its own. In well more than 25 years of audiobook reviewing, I have rarely encountered an audiobook as masterfully written and effectively performed as this. D.R.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 31, 2008
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.