Laurence winds up in Boston working for Thomas Coughlin, a Boston cop who, unlike his son Danny, values expedience more than principle. Lehane effectively conjures an era when segregation ruled in the North, too – segregation by both race and class.Ĭharacters like Ruth, whom Lehane conjures particularly vividly, and then- Boston Mayor Andrew Peters, help to frame the intertwined, quickening stories of Aiden “Danny” Coughlin, a Boston cop of storied Irish legacy, and Luther Laurence, a black man who flees his Tulsa home because of his involvement in a gangland murder. The secondary one is class warfare as depicted in baseball, union drives, and the gap between Boston Brahmins and the city’s largely Irish working class. The primary focus of the book is the failed Boston police strike of 1919. Edgar Hoover, and Calvin Coolidge in with fictional characters.
“The Given Day” mixes fact and fiction in epic fashion by swirling such historical figures as Babe Ruth, Communist author John Reed, J. It’s an enthralling journey and one that reaffirms the imagination and narrative vigor of Lehane. Lehane is best known for “Mystic River” and “Gone, Baby, Gone,” Boston-based police thrillers that double as morality tales even as they peer into the hearts of dysfunctional families and build on complex layers of honor.īut this time, in his eighth novel, Lehane dips back into the past. It sure sounds contemporary but The Given Day, Dennis Lehane’s wildly ambitious new novel, is set in Boston toward the end of World War I. A war-fatigued nation confronts an overheated economy, a tangle of vengeful terrorist organizations, rising joblessness, and racial tension.
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