The Given Day

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Overview

Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane's long-awaited eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future. Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters more richly drawn than any Lehane has ever created, The Given Day tells the story of two families—one black, one white—swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. Beat cop Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.

Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era—Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.

Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time—including the Spanish Influenza pandemic—and culminating in the Boston Police Strike of 1919, The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself. As Danny, Luther, and those around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another and, together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change all their lives.

Dennis Lehane

Editorial Reviews

Associated Press Staff

“Superbly written, meticulously researched. . . . A thoughtful, provocative exploration of race, fame, power, and political corruption in American culture. . . . The Given Day places [Lehane] in the first rank of modern American novelists.”

More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews

From The Critics

No more thinking of Mr. Lehane as an author of detective novels that make good movies (Gone, Baby, Gone) and tell devastatingly bleak Boston stories (Mystic River). He has written a majestic, fiery epic that moves him far beyond the confines of the crime genre…The Given Day is a huge, impassioned, intensively researched book that brings history alive by grounding the present in the lessons of the past.
—The New York Times

The Barnes & Noble Review

In his novels Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, -- both turned into gritty, dark, and terrific films -- Dennis Lehane has used a crime-fiction framework to intimately explore the shadowy depths and hidden drama of his hometown. Lehane knows Boston like nobody else, from its Harvard-educated Brahmin elites to its ethnic working stiffs whose roots trace back to Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere. His tales map the city's twisting streets and alleyways, so often incomprehensible to outsiders, and delve beyond the surface provincialism of its anything-but-laid-back populace. Now, with The Given Day, Lehane turns his literary focus to Boston's troubled past.

The Given Day is Lehane's most ambitious novel to date, possessing an all-encompassing narrative scope reminiscent of George Eliot or Thomas Hardy while successfully capturing the distinct atmosphere of turbulent Boston in the early 20th century. The book opens as World War I is winding down and the city is about to combust. With the Russian Revolution on the front pages, Bolshevism (and the fear of Bolshevism) is omnipresent. Meanwhile, the Boston Police Department faces the specter of a labor stoppage among its underpaid ranks, a possibility that horrifies the police brass and City Hall. Lehane also tosses in subplots centered on Red Sox slugger Babe Ruth and an African-American fugitive named Luther, who has escaped to Boston after killing a man in Tulsa.

Perhaps inevitably, an Irish-American family is at the center of Lehane's Boston epic. Thomas Coughlin is a legendary Boston cop who's now a member of the BPD brass. His son Danny has followed his dad onto the force, but the two men have dramatically different views about the job. Lehane offers a romantic subplot, too. Danny is in love with the family's mysterious Irish housekeeper, Nora O'Shea, but so is Danny's brother Connor. Needless to say, this romantic angle heightens the drama in a way that might seem distractingly conventional if it weren't so engrossing.

Like his father, Danny seeks to do good, but his views on what that means changes over the course of the novel. At the beginning, Danny views the good in simplistic terms: "It had something to do with loyalty and...a man's honor. It was tied up in duty." Danny embraces the prejudices of his family and his profession against African Americans and other ethnic groups, especially those espousing radical, left-leaning political views. His goal is to move up the ranks of the police department, just as his father has.

The police brass, among them his father, assign Danny to infiltrate and report on radical organizations like the new police union and underground groups advocating violence against the U.S. government. And while the affable, tough-as-nails Danny succeeds in infiltrating these groups, joining them leads him to reexamine his own prejudices and his deeply held beliefs about justice. Danny learns that the dark underworld of violence and its do-whatever-it-takes ethos extends not just to these supposed "terrorist" groups but to the Boston Police Department as well.

Lehane zeroes in on the radical political fervor of this era, taking us into smoke-filled meeting halls where union members argue about tactics and boozy barrooms where fights break out between radicals and "patriotic" Americans seeking to shut them up. Lehane provides plenty of action, too, as Danny finds himself involved in shootouts with bomb-toting anarchists and battles his way out of several scenes of mob violence. If all of this sounds too melodramatic to believe, it's not. The seemingly dissonant subplots come together as a dramatic whole; Lehane builds and releases narrative tension with all his customary craft. The prose is solid and strong throughout, and if Lehane consciously eschews lyrical flights of fancy, his writing style is perfectly suited to the toughness and solidity of these characters.

Perhaps the most gripping strand in this braided narrative is the story of Luther Laurence, which begins with his murder of a crime boss in Tulsa and subsequent flight to Boston. Through Luther's backstory, readers are vouchsafed a vivid picture of Tulsa's criminal underworld. Like Danny, Luther becomes a changed man in Boston: "If a man was lucky," Luther thinks to himself, "he was moving toward something his whole life. He was building a life...working for his wife, for his children, for his dream that their life would be better because he'd been a part of it. That, Luther finally understood, was what he'd failed to remember in Tulsa." Luther decides to return to Tulsa, risking his life to be with his wife and infant son.

Lehane's imagined world is a violent one, and an undercurrent of menace, the threat of bodily harm, seems to fuel every scene. All of these characters, but especially Danny and Luther, are caught in the confusion of wanting a more peaceful world while living in a world where violence is seemingly the only means of resolving differences. Danny is disgusted by the Bolshevik radical underworld that celebrates violence as a way of achieving the worker's paradise, but he also loathes a political status quo that uses brutality and unconstitutional means to eradicate these radicals. Nobody, Lehane suggests, is truly a neutral.

By book's end, everyone is moving away from the carnage of Boston. Danny, rejected by his dad for failing to live up to the family's strict code of honor, has married Nora and headed west. Luther goes back to Tulsa to face his past. Even Babe Ruth, Red Sox slugger extraordinaire, gets traded and faces an uncertain future with the Yankees. Lehane ends the book with Ruth arriving in New York, a dark moment in Boston history if ever there was one, and looking out at the city "in all its bustle and shine, all its light and billboards and limestone towers. What a day. What a city. What a time to be alive." Like the fabled slugger, Lehane has swung for the fences with this sprawling tale, hitting the ball on the sweet spot and watching it arc heavenward. --Chuck Leddy

Chuck Leddy is a member of the National Book Critics Circle who writes frequently about American history. He reviews books regularly for The Boston Globe, as well as Civil War Times and American History magazines. He is a contributing editor for The Writer magazine.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780380731879
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 9/15/2009
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 704
Sales rank: 58,384
Product dimensions: 5.31 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 1.15 (d)

Meet the Author

Dennis Lehane

Boston and its environs are the setting for most of Dennis Lehane’s fiction. From gritty inner-city motels to the lavish suburbs, Lehane brings a Boston subculture and its vivid characters to life in his detective novels. Lehane fans return time and time again for his tense psychological thrillers that chip away at secrets deep within the human soul.

Biography

Dennis Lehane knows Boston like the back of his hand. Born and raised in Beantown, he left to attend college and graduate school in Florida, but -- like a homing pigeon -- he returned soon thereafter. In order to support himself while he focused on his writing, he took a number of odd jobs that included counseling mentally handicapped and abused children, loading trucks, parking cars, working in bookstores, and waiting tables.

While he was still in college, he wrote the first draft of A Drink Before the War. Published in 1994, this Shamus Award winner introduced Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, private investigators who live and work in Dorchester, the same blue-collar Boston neighborhood Lehane grew up in. Since their compelling debut, Kenzie and Gennaro have gone on to star in a gritty crime noir series acclaimed by readers and critics alike.

The idea for his breakout novel , 2001's stand-alone thriller Mystic River, came to Lehane while he was still writing the Kenzie-Genarro installment Prayers for Rain. The story of three childhood friends who share a dark past, Mystic River is a murder mystery with powerful psychological overtones. An immediate sensation, the book achieved blockbuster status when Clint Eastwood turned it into an award-winning film in 2003. Then, in his 2007 directorial debut, Ben Affleck adapted Lehane's favorite Kenzie-Gennaro novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, for the big screen.

Lehane's career shows no signs of slowing down, Since the success of his Boston-based mysteries, he has broadened his oeuvre to include television screenplays and short stories -- one of which, "Until Gwen," was adopted into a successful, limited-run play.

Good To Know

Some interesting outtakes from our interview with Lehane:

"My favorite job was parking cars."

"My favorite game is pool."

"I have an obsession with the color blue -- blue house, blue car, lots of blue shirts."

"I love good writing. Unequivocally. I think competition between writers is wonderful and healthy, but I never understood envy. When a peer writes a book that I know I couldn't have written, I feel the strangest elation because at this point I learn as much if not more from my peers as I do from the old masters."

"I unwind to Red Sox games and am a Patriots season ticket holder. The worst months of every year are February and March -- no baseball, no football, no point."

1. Hometown:
  
  Boston, Massachusetts
1. Date of Birth:
  
  August 4, 1965
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Dorchester, Massachusetts
1. Education:
  
  B.A., Eckerd College, 1988; M.F.A., Florida International University, 1993
2. Website:
  
  http://www.dennislehanebooks.com

Read an Excerpt

The Given Day

A Novel

By Dennis Lehane
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2008

Dennis Lehane
All right reserved.

ISBN: 9780688163181

Chapter One

On a wet summer night, Danny Coughlin, a Boston police officer, fought a four-round bout against another cop, Johnny Green, at Mechanics Hall just outside Copley Square. Coughlin-Green was the final fight on a fifteen-bout, all-police card that included flyweights, welterweights, cruiserweights, and heavyweights. Danny Coughlin, at six two, 220, was a heavyweight. A suspect left hook and foot speed that was a few steps shy of blazing kept him from fighting professionally, but his butcher-knife left jab combined with the airmail-your-jaw-to-Georgia explosion of his right cross dwarfed the abilities of just about any other semipro on the East Coast.

The all-day pugilism display was titled Boxing & Badges: Haymakers for Hope. Proceeds were split fifty-fifty between the St. Thomas Asylum for Crippled Orphans and the policemen's own fraternal organization, the Boston Social Club, which used the donations to bolster a health fund for injured coppers and to defray costs for uniforms and equipment, costs the department refused to pay. While flyers advertising the event were pasted to poles and hung from storefronts in good neighborhoods and thereby elicited donations from people who never intended to actually attend the event, the flyers also saturated the worst of the Boston slums, where one was most likelyto find the core of the criminal element—the plug-uglies, the bullyboys, the knuckle-dusters, and, of course, the Gusties, the city's most powerful and fuck-out-of-their-minds street gang, who headquartered in South Boston but spread their tentacles throughout the city at large.

The logic was simple:

The only thing criminals loved almost as much as beating the shit out of coppers was watching coppers beat the shit out of each other.

Coppers beat the shit out of each other at Mechanics Hall during Boxing & Badges: Haymakers for Hope.

Ergo: criminals would gather at Mechanics Hall to watch them do so.

Danny Coughlin's godfather, Lieutenant Eddie McKenna, had decided to exploit this theory to the fullest for benefit of the BPD in general and the Special Squads Division he lorded over in particular. The men in Eddie McKenna's squad had spent the day mingling with the crowd, closing outstanding warrant after outstanding warrant with a surprisingly bloodless efficiency. They waited for a target to leave the main hall, usually to relieve himself, before they hit him over the head with a pocket billy and hauled him off to one of the paddy wagons that waited in the alley. By the time Danny stepped into the ring, most of the mugs with outstanding warrants had been scooped up or had slipped out the back, but a few—hopeless and dumb to the last—still milled about in the smoke-laden room on a floor sticky with spilt beer.

Danny's corner man was Steve Coyle. Steve was also his patrol partner at the Oh-One Station House in the North End. They walked a beat from one end of Hanover Street to the other, from Constitution Wharf to the Crawford House Hotel, and as long as they'd been doing it, Danny had boxed and Steve had been his corner and his cut man.

Danny, a survivor of the 1916 bombing of the Salutation Street Station House, had been held in high regard since his rookie year on the job. He was broad-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed; more than once, women had been noted openly regarding him, and not just immigrant women or those who smoked in public. Steve, on the other hand, was squat and rotund like a church bell, with a great pink bulb of a face and a bow to his walk. Early in the year he'd joined a barbershop quartet in order to attract the fancy of the fairer sex, a decision that had served him in good stead this past spring, though prospects appeared to be dwindling as autumn neared.

Steve, it was said, talked so much he gave aspirin powder a headache. He'd lost his parents at a young age and joined the department without any connections or juice. After nine years on the job, he was still a flatfoot. Danny, on the other hand, was BPD royalty, the son of Captain Thomas Coughlin of Precinct 12 in South Boston and the godson of Special Squads Lieutenant Eddie McKenna. Danny had been on the job less than five years, but every cop in the city knew he wasn't long for uniform.

Fuckin' taking this guy so long? Steve scanned the back of the hall, hard to ignore in his attire of choice. He claimed he'd read somewhere that Scots were the most feared of all corner men in the fight game. And so, on fight nights, Steve came to the ring in a kilt. An authentic, red tartan kilt, red and black argyle socks, charcoal tweed jacket and matching five-button waistcoat, silver wedding tie, authentic gillie brogues on his feet, and a loose-crowned Balmoral on his head. The real surprise wasn't how at home he looked in the getup, it was that he wasn't even Scottish.

The audience, red-faced and drunk, had grown increasingly agitated the last hour or so, more and more actual fights breaking out between the scheduled ones. Danny leaned against the ropes and yawned. Mechanics Hall stank of sweat and booze. Smoke, thick and wet, curled around his arms. By all rights he should have been back in his dressing room, but he didn't really have a dressing room, just a bench in the maintenance hallway, where they'd sent Woods from the Oh-Nine looking for him five minutes ago, told him it was time to head to the ring.

So he stood there in an empty ring waiting for Johnny Green, the buzz of the crowd growing louder, buzzier. Eight rows back, one guy hit another guy with a folding chair. The hitter was so drunk he fell on top of his victim. A cop waded in, clearing a path with his domed helmet in one hand and his pocket billy in the other.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Given Day by Dennis Lehane Copyright © 2008 by Dennis Lehane. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Anonymous

Posted September 29, 2008

Lehane is a master....

Stepping away from the familiar, Lehane takes us back to 1900s Boston. Other reviewers have given loads of info. All I will say is, you won't be dissappointed. Loved it from first page to last and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a historical but readable novel. This one should go to the top.

6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted November 6, 2009

A new favorite book

I loved this book! Lehane does such a great job developing the characters that I felt like I knew them each and was very attached to them. There are few twists that you don't see coming, and some predictable stuff mostly because of the period in time it takes place. He does a great job weaving the story into historical events. This is the kind of story that can go on and on.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted August 14, 2008

What a read!

What a piece of work Dennis Lehane has brought us! I was taken back in time in the early 1900's when Babe Ruth was playing and the Boston policemen went on strike and the city went crazy. One of the most touching characters in the book is Luther. His team played Babe Ruth! I felt like I was there and was angry and hurt as if I had been playing myself. I hate to give too much away and ruin the book. The Given Day also deals with race relations in the 1900's. Later Luther befriends a Boston policeman and his wife. They have a wonderful and amazing friendship. The Given Day deals with power, corruption, good and evil. I loved it!! Thank you Mr. Lehane

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted September 5, 2008

A terific historical

In 1917, the Great War has expanded with the Yanks coming over there. While patriotism to support the troops remains high on the home front there is also resentment not just by those who opposed America entering the war some are irate because of conditions in the States. --------------- In Boston by 1918 most of the police force feels strongly they have twin grievances. First there was a promise made that if the cops accepted 1905 cost of living wages during the war, they would be adjusted soon after. Second with danger seemingly everywhere from anarchists setting off bombs, other social unrest in the name of all types of cause and the Spanish Flu lurking behind every door, the job has become much more dangerous without any efforts to counter the peril a cop faces constantly. A strike is expected as the Boston Social Club takes a major stronghold amongst the police officers with promises to bring wages to current cost of living and improve safety conditions. --------------- When Irish policeman Danny Coughlin meets Black Luther Laurence, they become unlikely friends. The former is the son of the most influential police captain and nephew of another ranking officer while the latter is on the run after an incident involving an organized Tulsa crime mob tied to the esteemed older Coughlin.------------- This terific historical takes a deep look at Boston just as WWI is ending through the Coughlin and Laurence families. The story line focuses on social class and social warfare as reform, anarchism, and a return to the golden days prior to the war all battle for supremacy. The ensemble cast is solid with extended family members playing key roles while real persona like Babe Ruth as a Red Sox pitching star about to be traded and W.E.B DuBois forming the NAACP set the era. Dennis Lehane provides a superb look at the situation on the ground when the city is divided between those who want to destroy the social order, those who want to change to social order into being more inclusive, and those who want to return the social order to before the democratization of WWI.--------------- Harriet Klausner

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted June 17, 2008

It flows like silk

I've been waiting forever for this to be published. The last time I talked to Lehane, he said it was turning into a 'brick', and he didn't know when it'd be published. He is my favorite writer and I wasn't too happy with the 5 year wait. But, it was worth it, totally. The rest of his novels have been mysteries, this is not. It is historical fiction, at it's finest. Well written, well researched, The Given Day covers a turbulant time in American history, at the end of The Great War and, of course, it's set in Boston. Over 700 pages, but truly a fast read because you can't put it down, it just flows and you are swept up, as you read it.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted December 15, 2011

Aye-Aye

This is like the best eva!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Lolly56

Posted January 30, 2010

more from this reviewer

And the award for favorite book of 2009 goes to, Dennis Lehane - "The Given Day"

Before leaving to spend Christmas in London, I purchased "The Given Day" at my local Barnes & Noble. At the time, I had no idea that I had given myself the best present of all. From the beginning, the characters, plot, pace and writing style had me hooked. What a stoke of genius to include Babe Ruth in the story! I would highly recommend this book for anyone that is a fan of either history, baseball, the human condition or, just wants to read one heck of a story.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Constitution_In_Exile

Posted January 15, 2010

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Michael Boatman is the real star of this novel.

Having listened to the audiobook version of this book, Michael Boatman's ability to get into audio character of each of the various characters is astounding. He voices the different accents, from thick Irish, to Bostonian, Black, Yankee, and yes, although somwhat lacking, even the female persona. The actors come alive in the story and one finds themself transformed into an era long forgotten. The issues surrounding post war America and an economy struggling to survive, while a true flu pandemic rages throughout the country, are met with various political groups bent on altering America as they knew it. It pits labor against management while focusing on issues of ethnicity, gender, religion, and national pride; all while millions of servicemen are returning to an economy incapable of handling so many white men looking for jobs where none exist. It shines a spotlight on the huge underbelly of corruption. That was the Boston Police Department, and the mob power brokers on the eve of the 1919 prohibition and woven into the fabric of nearly every societal faction, from the lowly beat cop, to the governor of Massachuchetts, to the black culture of corruption in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of all places. One could confuse the conditions of society then with the very issues facing America today. Then it was anarchists, bolshevicks, and unions. Today it is Al Queada, health care, the green movement, ACORN and an out of control government. LeHane pulls together so many seemingly disconnected issues and weaves them in such a way that one finds themself researching historical archives to verify his story. Oddly enough, the historical accounts of the riots and the Boston Police strike are quite accurate and his portrayal of the events are nothing less than amazing. Historical perspective is the biggest contribution LeHane brings to the table. Boatman simply brings his work to life. This would make a great movie on par with Mitchell's Gone With The Wind. Every time I listened to the audiobook, I came away with something new that had escaped me on a previous listening. I will listen to it a few more times before I am completely satisfied. This is a must for any library.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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senated

Posted September 11, 2009

Good story teaches about and interesting time

Good story and characters tell about an interesting time in American history (post World War I) in Boston and the dominant political themes of the time. Real life characters are woven into the fictional account about issues such as labor unrest,race relaions, terrorism, and even baseball. My only criticism is that the violence depicted in the book was a little over the top and really not necessary. In the final analysis an exceelent book about the development of urban America in modern times and the growing pains it endured.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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kttymoe

Posted July 26, 2009

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Another great one by Lehane

I have read all the books Dennis has written and this one was no disappointment as well....interesting times and great plot....characters felt like more than one ...almost like a group of people from that time....impossible to put down and sad when I arrived at the end.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 3, 2009

I Also Recommend:

Amazing

Yet another amazing book by my favorite author, Dennis Lehane. Deatiled descriptions on the story have already been given so I won't rehash them, but I had to add my 5 stars to such an excellent book.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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kdporteus

Posted March 3, 2009

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Great historical fiction

An interesting snapshot of post WWI Boston.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Maeve

Posted February 16, 2009

Disappointing

I had great expectations for _The Given Day_, and if Dennis Lehane had stuck to what he knew - authenticity of setting, tight-as-a-drum plotting, and unexpected denouement - the book would have succeeded in enthralling me. While his 1918 Boston is drawn impeccably, Lehane's attempts at creating involving romantic subplots among the protagonists and the objects of their affections fall flat. Perhaps this is because we never know the inner lives of the characters intimately enough to care about them. Luther is by far the most sympathetic character of the novel because we hear his conscience and his dreams; we hardly know Nora and Lila, and Danny is far too busy as the hub around which all the historical figures and happenings that Lehane feels obligated to squash into his 650+ pages must turn. The rambling plot feels like a blatant, sophomoric grab at 'the great American novel', and while the history is interesting, one can almost feel Lehane's compulsion to include every last found bit of his research on the place and the era. By the last few pages, my primary feeling about the book was "get it over with, already" - and as expected, the ending felt flat and forced. _The Given Day_, far from being a keeper, is kindling-in-waiting for my fireplace.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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ClarkP

Posted January 8, 2009

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An instant classic. . .

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane is one of my all-time favorite books. Lehane creates some of the best characters and plot-lines that I have ever read, period. Lehane incorporates many interesting historical topics throughout. . .such as civil rights, WWI, unionism, communism, as well as many others. Not only is this book historically educational, it is extremely entertaining as well. 700+ pages seems short for this masterpiece work of fiction. I hope Dennis Lehane receives all the awards and recognition that he deserves for this book. I will be recommending it to everyone that I can.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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tpucin

Posted December 12, 2008

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Fantastic story

This book combined fascinating characters and historical perspective to provide an unflinching portrait of Boston post WWI. Unionism, civil rights, a fear of communism, with a little Babe Ruth thrown in are combined to tell of a changing world. Dennis Lehane keeps you interested from page one.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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opbitty

Posted December 11, 2008

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A MUST READ

LEHANE SHOULD BE A MASTER WEAVER BECAUSE AS HE SITS AT HIS "LOOM" THAT IS THE GIVEN DAY HE MARRIES THE POLITICAL, SOCIAL, & LABOR ISSUES OF BOSTON CIRCE 1919 INTO SUCH A RICH TAPESTRY IT CAN ONY BE DESCRIBED AS GENIUS! 2 LOVE STORIES TO BOOT! KUDOS!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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LaurieOH

Posted November 15, 2008

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It will draw you in

This book started a little slow for me, but be patient and allow yourself to be drawn into the world Lehane has created. The interweaving of real events with the fictional story of these families adds another point of interest. Who knew there was such a thing as a molasses flood? This great big book went all too fast as I progressed. I thought the characters and situations were believable, and I liked that the main characters were not drawn in black and white. This is the first of Lehane's books that I have read, but won't be the last.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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KenCady

Posted October 29, 2008

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Several Days

It takes several days to read The Given Day, but each day is worth it. This is just the kind of book one can sink into and get carried away with. Lehane creates the sights and sounds to involve you in the lives of the characters. I was glad that it was a long book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted December 4, 2011

Mocking jay

Hflgfhl
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MtnMike

Posted November 27, 2011

Fabulous historical novel

I found it a little difficult to suspend disbelief at times -- the main character happens to be in the right place to be involved in pretty much every significant event in this period of Boston history -- but this book is a really great read. Lehane provides a really cool narrative that gives flesh to all sorts of interesting historical figures, everyone from Babe Ruth to Calvin Coolidge and the early founders of the Boston NAACP chapter. For anyone who likes historical novels or is interested in Boston history, or even US history in the early 20th century, this is a great choice.
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The Given Day

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Lehane is a master....

A new favorite book

What a read!

A terific historical

It flows like silk

Aye-Aye

And the award for favorite book of 2009 goes to, Dennis Lehane - "The Given Day"

Michael Boatman is the real star of this novel.

Good story teaches about and interesting time

Another great one by Lehane

Amazing

Great historical fiction

Disappointing

An instant classic. . .

Fantastic story

A MUST READ

It will draw you in

Several Days

Mocking jay

Fabulous historical novel