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A review by ohlittleowl
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
5.0
I'm a sucker for epics, especially family-dramas that come with "cast of characters" or "family tree" sections, so I was bound to love this 700-page tome.
The Given Day completely immerses you in a pivotal moment in history, giving you the sights, sounds, and tensions of early-1900's Boston, a city struggling to recover from World War I and all of its residual effects. The characters are richly drawn out and their struggles are very human. The historical details were well researched, and the time period well-represented.
The book is essentially about two families (one black, one white) intersecting in Boston amidst all the social unrest of the times. It's about a whole lot more than that really, (influenza, anarchists, socialism, Bolsheviks, Prohibition, racism, the strikes, baseball, Babe Ruth) but that's the simple driving force behind it. And it brings you from start to finish wondering from one moment to the next how the bonds of family, blood and created, will evolve.
Highly, highly recommended.
The Given Day completely immerses you in a pivotal moment in history, giving you the sights, sounds, and tensions of early-1900's Boston, a city struggling to recover from World War I and all of its residual effects. The characters are richly drawn out and their struggles are very human. The historical details were well researched, and the time period well-represented.
The book is essentially about two families (one black, one white) intersecting in Boston amidst all the social unrest of the times. It's about a whole lot more than that really, (influenza, anarchists, socialism, Bolsheviks, Prohibition, racism, the strikes, baseball, Babe Ruth) but that's the simple driving force behind it. And it brings you from start to finish wondering from one moment to the next how the bonds of family, blood and created, will evolve.
Highly, highly recommended.