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Mar 17, 2014maipenrai rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
**** 1/2 STARS. Set primarily in Boston at the end of the First World War, Dennis Lehane's novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future. The book 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, Oklahoma works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife. Woven into the story 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 of the country as it struggles to redefine itself after WWI. 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. **** Excellent book! Terrific and believable interweaving of the lives of people from vastly different backgrounds. Great history lesson on the birth of labor actions and Boston history. Highly recommend!!