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.Ĭoursing 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. Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era-Babe Ruth Eugene O'Neill leftist activist Jack Reed NAACP founder W. 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. 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.īeat 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.

Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times best-selling 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.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane