"The Given Day"

"The Given Day" is Dennis Lehane's 8th novel and I found it quite different than the first few I read.  This one is what I would consider historical fiction and I found it a very interesting read.  It basically tells the tale of what led up to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 and the political, racial, and union strife of the time as well as touching on the end of World War I and the problems that came with the war and soldiers bringing home the Spanish flu epidemic.  I also gained an understanding of what probably led up to the Communist "witch" hunts in later years.

We're introduced to two families in the beginning of the story as well as Babe Ruth and other "real" well known individuals from that era.  One fictional family is the Coughlin family whose father, Tommy, is a high ranking police officer and his oldest son, Danny, walks a police beat.  His next older son, Connor, is an attorney and his youngest son, Joey, is still at home and in school.  Tommy is an Irish immigrant who stowed away on a boat to get to America and a better life.  That's where he met another stowaway who became his best friend in America and Danny's Godfather.

Our other parallel story follows a black man, Luther Lawrence, who loses his well paying job in an Ohio munitions factory due to the end of the war and needing to open up the jobs for the white boys coming back from the war.  He and his girlfriend move to a black town near Tulsa where they marry.  However, the course of his life doesn't run smooth and he ends up fleeing the authorities and settling in Boston leaving his pregnant wife behind.  Boston is where he and Danny meet and their stories begin to converge.

The first part of the book setting the stage for what was to follow was slower going for me but I'm glad I persevered as it is a great story that shows how much things really haven't changed in some ways as far as our political and racial issues go and our compassion (or lack thereof) for the poor.  pazt