‘The Given Day’ is thoughtful, provocative

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By OLINE H. COGDILL / South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(“The Given Day” by Dennis Lehane, Morrow, $27.95).Throughout his excellent private detective series and his superlative stand-alone mysteries, “Mystic River” and “Shudder Island,” Dennis Lehane has explored how individuals become who they are.

This theme is also the bedrock of “The Given Day,” Lehane’s most ambitious novel.

While it retains some elements of crime fiction, “The Given Day” leaps into historical fiction with ease and grace, exploring the beginnings of the 20th century and culminating in the 1919 Boston Police Strike. “The Given Day” has more in common with E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime” or Edward Rutherfurd’s “London”; yet it is as much a thriller as any of Lehane’s previous work.

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Dennis Lehane’s new book is “The Given Day.” Lehane is the author of “Mystic River.” (Teri Ruth Unger)

Dennis Lehane’s new book is “The Given Day.” Lehane is the author of “Mystic River.” (Teri Ruth Unger)

Even beyond the historical events, “The Given Day” qualifies as a sprawling, sweeping epic. The story elegantly moves from Boston to Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri and several other parts of the country, giving the reader a clear sense of place for each locale.

Throughout the story, Lehane examines racism, xenophobia, workers’ rights, the economy, terrorism, religious repression, union violence, communism, politics and social change. But “The Given Day” never seems crammed with ideology and never loses sight of the story.

At the center of “The Given Day” are two men, one white, one black. Danny Coughlin, the son of forceful police captain Thomas Coughlin, works as a beat cop in Boston’s North End, the Italian district where he also lives. Although he has eschewed his Irish family’s home, Danny still wants to prove himself to his politically connected father. Danny has been promised a promotion if he will go undercover to infiltrate Bolsheviks and anarchists who are trying to recruit the city’s poor immigrants. But Danny finds himself empathizing with the workers’ movement; the poorly paid police also live in poverty.

For Luther Laurence, Boston is the last place he expected to be. Laurence thought he’d found a home in an all-black town outside of Tulsa, where he was building a life with his pregnant wife. But after killing a black mob leader, Luther was forced to flee in the middle of the night, ending up in Boston where he works for the Coughlin family. Luther’s political awareness also increases as he helps build Boston’s first NAACP headquarters.

As the volatile atmosphere builds around them, the two men become allies and witnesses to the changing world.

Lehane weaves in real people such as Emma Goldman, W.E.B. Du Bois, Babe Ruth, Jack Reed, Herbert Hoover, Eugene O’Neill, as well as events like the Spanish influenza pandemic and more, to move the story along. This device, which can seem forced and gimmicky in the wrong hands, serves as a touchstone that makes “The Given Day” more realistic. The first chapter opens with Babe Ruth playing a pickup baseball game in a field with a group of black workers. But this scene has less to do with baseball and all to do with racism.

At 720 pages, “The Given Day” could double as a doorstop, but Lehane’s masterful pacing and precise prose make the story speed by. As with the finest of historical fiction, Lehane, who took four years to write “The Given Day,” shows that the fears and concerns of the 21st century are as fresh and raw as they were in the 20th century. All that’s changed is the technology and the way we dress.