Rattled by the gruesome accidental death of a coworker, Slip Wilson quits his job at a logging camp, and decides to make a clean start in Seattle. But along the way, he rescues a woman and her young niece from their car in the ditch, and his life takes a hard turn. The woman, Ellie Hobbes, is an archist with big dreams. But first, she has to take care of that pesky dead body in the trunk of her car...
About the Author :
The youngest of five children, John Straley was born in 1953. He received a BA in English and a certificate of completion in Horse Shoeing. He has brown eyes and likes jokes and a wide variety of literature and music. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Curious Eat Themselves and The Woman Who Married a Bear and was appointed the Writer Laureate of Alaska in 2006. John Straley lives with his wife, Jan, a prominent whale biologist, in a bright green house on the beach in Sitka, Alaska, where he works as a criminal defense investigator by day and sleeps, writes, and plays with his band, The Big Fat Babies, whenever he can.
Review :
Praise for The Big Both Ways
"A thrilling journey . . . sure-footed and deeply evocative."
--Seattle Times "Moving . . . and utterly absorbing."
--Denver Post
"[A] gripping tale of survival, betrayal and murder set in the Pacific Northwest in 1935 . . . Straley's beautifully understated narrative, vivid sense of place and unapologetic, unadorned characters make this a riveting, unpredictable ride."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Reviews
"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."
--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
