I want to thank Councilor Kenney and Governor Sununu for bringing Elizabeth Gurley Flynn more prominently into my consciousness than an historical marker would have done on its own. They inspired me to go to the library to check out Jess Walter’s 2020 novel “The Cold Millions.”
Set in Spokane in 1909-10, it features Flynn as a major character working to organize for the IWW. The last chapter jumps to 1964. The protagonist is following the Freedom Riders and Martin Luther King on the evening news when he reads her obituary, and he reflects that Flynn “would have been right alongside them, alone and pregnant, nineteen, and not a doubt in her mind that goodness would eventually prevail.” Sounds like someone I would have been happy to know. Now I’ll have to seek out a biography.
Robert S. Pingree
Concord