William Morrow
October 2008
On Sale: October 1, 2008
Featuring: Danny Coughlin; Luther Lawrence
352 pages ISBN: 0688163181 EAN: 9780688163181 Hardcover Add to Wish List
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.