The Big Both Ways (A Cold Storage Novel) - Softcover

Praise for The Big Both Ways

"A thrilling journey.... sure-footed and deeply evocative."
--Seattle Times

"Moving... and utterly absorbing."
--Denver Post

"A riveting, unpredictable ride."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Reviews

"A rich tale.... Straley hits all the right notes here."
--Booklist, Starred Review

"A rousing good read."
--Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Praise for John Straley

"Lesser writers look to their characters' poor choices and attempts to rectify them, John Straley loves his characters for just those choices. Hölderlin wrote: 'Poetically man dwells on the earth.' Some of us wind up in limericks, some in heroic couplets. But damned near every one of us, sooner or later, ends up in one of Straley's wise, wayward, wonderfully unhinged novels."
--James Sallis, author of Drive and the Lew Griffin mysteries

"Like the Coen brothers on literary speed, John Straley is among the very best stylists of his generation."
--Ken Bruen, Shamus Award winning author of The Guard

"Chandler, Ross Macdonald, James Crumley... Straley proves once again that he is up there with the great ones... His prose is as smooth as a well-tuned cello. He has tremendous feeling for the setting: not only the open waters and frosted countryside outside of Sitka and Juneau, but also the somewhat seedy streets of these cities."
--Chicago Tribune

"Superior thriller writing, once again by Straley--an excellent plot against Alaska's gigantic and bizarre backdrop."
--Janwillem van de Wetering

"Now and then a writer dares to flout the rules and in so doing, carves out a niche that belongs to him alone. John Straley's novels are like no others."
--San Diego Tribune

"Like James Lee Burke, Straley transcends the genre.... Marvelous."
--The Tampa Tribune and Times

"Straley's beautifully understated narrative, vivid sense of place and unapologetic, unadorned characters make this a riveting, unpredictable ride."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Outstanding.... satisfies on all levels."
--The Kansas City Star

"Strong and sobering... with his storyteller's sense of dramatic action [Straley's] in his glory."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Straley hits all the right notes"
--Booklist, Starred Review

Alaska, 1935: Slippery Wilson is on his way out of town when he runs into a woman, her neice, and a crashed car. His life is about to get a lot more complicated.
 
It's 1935 and jobs are scarce, but Slippery Wilson walks off his job at a logging camp after a gruesome accident kills a coworker. He's headed for Seattle with all his savings; he 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 anarchist from the docks of Seattle who watches out for her young niece and dreams of flying planes. But right now, she's got one 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 niece, and her noisy yellow bird on a heart-stopping adventure up the Inside Passage from Puget Sound to Alaska