A review by paulataua
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

3.0

The Given Day is a fairly admirable attempt to capture the mood and events in Boston (and to some extent the rest of America) around 1918-1919. The story follows the lives and separate fortunes of two characters, Danny and Luther, through a series of real live events, the Spanish flu, the Boston Molasses Disaster, the police officers’ strike, and the development of the labor movement. The story also includes a long list of cameo appearances including Babe Ruth, J Edgar Hoover early on in his career. revolutionary John Reed, and even Calvin Coolidge, the then governor of Massachusetts. Although interesting from a historical viewpoint, the story never really grabbed a hold of me. I always felt that Lehane wrote damn good stories where the characters were at the center and driving the story, but here I felt he set out a list of events, and a group of points to make, and then tried to weave a story about the characters around them. It seemed just a little contrived, like Danny didn’t decide to go to a certain bar but was directed there so that Ruth and Reed could be brought into the story again, and that Luther didn’t ‘choose’ to get off the boxcar at East St Louis, but was taken there to allow the East St Louis Riots to be discussed. It seems as if Lehane did an immense amount of research for the book, and that maybe doesn’t always lead to the best results. Still and all, I am probably being overcritical. It was an OK read.