The Given Day
First edition
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| Author | Dennis Lehane |
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| Country |
 United States
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | William Morrow and Company |
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Publication date
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September 23, 2008 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 704 p. |
| ISBN | |
| Followed by | Live by Night |
The Given Day is a novel by Dennis Lehane published in September 2008; it is about the early twentieth-century period and set in Boston, Massachusetts, where its actions include the 1919 police strike, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the thriving Greenwood District was known as the "Black Wall Street".
The Given Day is a historical novel set in Boston, Massachusetts and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The story has two main characters: Aiden "Danny" Coughlin, an ethnic Irish Boston Police patrolman, whose father is a prominent detective and captain in the department; and Luther Laurence, a talented black amateur baseball player from Columbus, Ohio.
The novel starts at the end of the First World War, when union organizing activities are high across the country. The year is 1918 and the BPD patrolmen have not been given a raise since 1905; they are working for below-poverty level wages. The Boston Social Club (BSC) is the fraternal organization of the BPD patrolmen and its members begin to discuss their grievances and possible actions. Due to his family's high status and reputation in the police department, Danny is reluctant to attend BSC meetings. His partner, Steve Coyle, is able to get him to attend some meetings where the BSC hopes to join the American Federation of Labor, a national union. BPD Captain Thomas Coughlin (Danny's father), FBI agent Rayme Finch, and a Department of Justice lawyer, the young J. Edgar Hoover, assign Danny to infiltrate the Roxbury Lettish Workingman's Society in promise of his detective's stripes. Danny is told that they may be collaborating with other radical cells to plan a national revolt on May Day. As Danny is undercover attending meetings with the Letts, he begins to identify with some of the principles they preach. He soon is elected as the vice-president of the BSC.
Luther Laurence and his pregnant wife, Lila, move from Columbus to Tulsa, Oklahoma to start a new life closer to some of her relatives in the Greenwood District. Laurence and his friend Jessie earn some extra money running numbers for a local bookie and gangster, Deacon Skinner Brocious. When Jessie gets caught skimming from Deacon, a deadly confrontation ensues. Laurence has to leave his wife in Tulsa and flees to Boston, where his uncle sets him up with the Giddreauxs, a black couple who lead the Boston chapter of the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In Boston Luther gets work as a handyman and servant in the home of police Captain Thomas Coughlin. While working for the Coughlins, Laurence becomes close friends with Nora O'Shea, an Irish immigrant and servant. She was taken in by the Coughlins five years earlier, when the captain found her shivering in the streets on Christmas Eve. Nora and Danny had a love affair, which ended when he discovered a dark secret from her past. She has become engaged to his younger brother, a rising attorney.
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