A Slice Of Boston Life After World War I- Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day
Book Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Given Day, Dennis Lehane, William Morrow and Company, 2008
Dennis Lehane, better known for his crime detection novels with PIs Pat and Angie in several previous books, a few of which have been adapted to the screen, had like many writers decided in 2008 to branch out, branch out a little, and immerse himself in a historical novel, The Given Day, centered as almost always with Lehane in Boston and its environs although here the old Southie Irish ghetto and the North End Italian ghetto gain center stage rather than his beloved Dorchester.
The key event which the novel is built around is the famous Boston Police Strike of 1919 (or infamous depending on your point of view, your view on unionization of public employees, on public sector strikes, or for that matter your view of whether the police are part of the labor movement) which then Massachusetts Governor Calvin (later accidental President “Silent Cal”) Coolidge had put down with a vengeance. Other events including the obligatory homage to the history of the Red Sox complete with bigger than life profile of George “Babe” Ruth in that year, the great molasses flood, the situation with blacks and what they created for themselves in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the local ramifications of the “red scare” Palmer raids directed at radicals in general and anarchists, philosophical or bomb-throwing, add spice to the mix.
Of course even something as historically note-worthy as that police strike which caused great riots among the populace to explode is thin gruel for an almost eight hundred page stretch so Mr. Lehane had filled it out with a three-pronged story line involving the “sultan of swat,” Babe Ruth during his short sojourn in Boston as a Red Sox, an up and coming young Irish Boston police officer steeped in family tradition on the force who gets “religion” over the unionization and strike issues, and, a young up and coming black man on the run from a troubled past who lands feet first in Boston where he comes of age as a man. I am not sure that the three prongs withstand the slight intersections that each story brings to the novel to try to tie the work together and to make some note-worthy social statement but separately they are of some interest as a fast-paced work.
Of course for anyone familiar with Boston and who has lived there, like this reviewer, the rattling off of known areas of the city, known events, and known little habits of mind and thought is always a plus and such devices follow from Mr. Lehane’s previous works in his crime detection series. Boston then as now although the ethnic configuration has changed was made up of neighborhoods, mainly Irish and Italian where most of the action in the novel takes place. Lehane is at his best when he describes the up and coming Irish who are starting to assert themselves in this period on the political and social life of the city, starting to give that old WASP hierarchy a run for its money.
Lehane follows the central protagonist (if you star-struck in the first section cannot get beyond, do not count the “Babe” as such), Danny Coughlin through about a year or so of his life leading up to the police strike. Danny had been, like his father who rose from the ranks to become a captain in the department, driven to be the best cop he could be. But things got in the way, things like that immigrant shanty Irish maid with an unspoken past and plenty of courage, Nora, in his father’s household (thus the reader knows, or should know, that the Coughlins have “arrived” in America being able to hire help, even “bog” Irish help just like the Mayfair swells on Beacon Hill) who disturbed his sleep and who does so one way or another all throughout the novel before they reunite. Things too like his quirky little affair with an Italian women who was also an ardent bomb-throwing anarchist who lurked behind the main story line and whose actions provide color to the post- World War I “red scare’ that had all people of property afraid for their lives. And which would look good on his upward mobile resume. Things like his turning from that up and coming cop to a “radical” in the formation of the police union that would eventually vote to go on strike with very severe consequences.
And things too like Danny’s budding friendship of sorts with the young black man on the run, Luther Lawrence, who for a time was a servant in Danny’s father’s house (alerting the reader to the fact that the Coughlins really, really have arrived in America to have both “bog “Irish and fashionable black help which also should make one wonder how that was done on a Boston police captain’s pay but the readercan figure that out just from life). In the end, police strike or not, Danny is destined to have to move on, to seek his destiny (and Nora hers) someplace other than Boston.
Lawrence, the young black man, out of Tulsa, Oklahoma via Ohio also has some things, some things besides the obvious question of what being black in America in the time of Jim Crow down south and not much better up north, got in the way. Things like that gal who was back in Tulsa with his child, and she would adamantly not talk to him for a while. Things like a little off-hand multiple murders he committed to get out from under some serious problems he had with the king hell king black crime boss in Tulsa which necessitated his flight in frigid Boston. Things like being the target of some serious racial baiting and threatened murder if he did not flee Boston. So between the two young men from different cultural backgrounds a bond developed which helped both men survive and to overcome their separate problems. Whether in the Boston of 1919 such an interracial bond could have developed then given the subsequent history of the city is problematic but that is the virtue of historical fiction.
Book Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Given Day, Dennis Lehane, William Morrow and Company, 2008
Dennis Lehane, better known for his crime detection novels with PIs Pat and Angie in several previous books, a few of which have been adapted to the screen, had like many writers decided in 2008 to branch out, branch out a little, and immerse himself in a historical novel, The Given Day, centered as almost always with Lehane in Boston and its environs although here the old Southie Irish ghetto and the North End Italian ghetto gain center stage rather than his beloved Dorchester.
The key event which the novel is built around is the famous Boston Police Strike of 1919 (or infamous depending on your point of view, your view on unionization of public employees, on public sector strikes, or for that matter your view of whether the police are part of the labor movement) which then Massachusetts Governor Calvin (later accidental President “Silent Cal”) Coolidge had put down with a vengeance. Other events including the obligatory homage to the history of the Red Sox complete with bigger than life profile of George “Babe” Ruth in that year, the great molasses flood, the situation with blacks and what they created for themselves in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the local ramifications of the “red scare” Palmer raids directed at radicals in general and anarchists, philosophical or bomb-throwing, add spice to the mix.
Of course even something as historically note-worthy as that police strike which caused great riots among the populace to explode is thin gruel for an almost eight hundred page stretch so Mr. Lehane had filled it out with a three-pronged story line involving the “sultan of swat,” Babe Ruth during his short sojourn in Boston as a Red Sox, an up and coming young Irish Boston police officer steeped in family tradition on the force who gets “religion” over the unionization and strike issues, and, a young up and coming black man on the run from a troubled past who lands feet first in Boston where he comes of age as a man. I am not sure that the three prongs withstand the slight intersections that each story brings to the novel to try to tie the work together and to make some note-worthy social statement but separately they are of some interest as a fast-paced work.
Of course for anyone familiar with Boston and who has lived there, like this reviewer, the rattling off of known areas of the city, known events, and known little habits of mind and thought is always a plus and such devices follow from Mr. Lehane’s previous works in his crime detection series. Boston then as now although the ethnic configuration has changed was made up of neighborhoods, mainly Irish and Italian where most of the action in the novel takes place. Lehane is at his best when he describes the up and coming Irish who are starting to assert themselves in this period on the political and social life of the city, starting to give that old WASP hierarchy a run for its money.
Lehane follows the central protagonist (if you star-struck in the first section cannot get beyond, do not count the “Babe” as such), Danny Coughlin through about a year or so of his life leading up to the police strike. Danny had been, like his father who rose from the ranks to become a captain in the department, driven to be the best cop he could be. But things got in the way, things like that immigrant shanty Irish maid with an unspoken past and plenty of courage, Nora, in his father’s household (thus the reader knows, or should know, that the Coughlins have “arrived” in America being able to hire help, even “bog” Irish help just like the Mayfair swells on Beacon Hill) who disturbed his sleep and who does so one way or another all throughout the novel before they reunite. Things too like his quirky little affair with an Italian women who was also an ardent bomb-throwing anarchist who lurked behind the main story line and whose actions provide color to the post- World War I “red scare’ that had all people of property afraid for their lives. And which would look good on his upward mobile resume. Things like his turning from that up and coming cop to a “radical” in the formation of the police union that would eventually vote to go on strike with very severe consequences.
And things too like Danny’s budding friendship of sorts with the young black man on the run, Luther Lawrence, who for a time was a servant in Danny’s father’s house (alerting the reader to the fact that the Coughlins really, really have arrived in America to have both “bog “Irish and fashionable black help which also should make one wonder how that was done on a Boston police captain’s pay but the readercan figure that out just from life). In the end, police strike or not, Danny is destined to have to move on, to seek his destiny (and Nora hers) someplace other than Boston.
Lawrence, the young black man, out of Tulsa, Oklahoma via Ohio also has some things, some things besides the obvious question of what being black in America in the time of Jim Crow down south and not much better up north, got in the way. Things like that gal who was back in Tulsa with his child, and she would adamantly not talk to him for a while. Things like a little off-hand multiple murders he committed to get out from under some serious problems he had with the king hell king black crime boss in Tulsa which necessitated his flight in frigid Boston. Things like being the target of some serious racial baiting and threatened murder if he did not flee Boston. So between the two young men from different cultural backgrounds a bond developed which helped both men survive and to overcome their separate problems. Whether in the Boston of 1919 such an interracial bond could have developed then given the subsequent history of the city is problematic but that is the virtue of historical fiction.
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