The Given Day

Now In Paperback

"In a splendid flowering of the talent previously demonstrated in his crime fiction, Lehane combines 20th-century American history, a gripping story of a family torn by pride and the strictures of the Catholic Church, and the plot of a multifaceted thriller. Set in Boston during and after WWI, this engrossing epic brings alive a pivotal period in our cultural maturation through a pulsing narrative that exposes social turmoil, political chicanery and racial prejudice, and encompasses the Spanish flu pandemic, the Boston police strike of 1919 and red-baiting and anti-union violence. . . . This story of fathers and sons, love and betrayal, idealism and injustice, prejudice and brotherly feeling is a dark vision of the brutality inherent in human nature and the dire fate of some who try to live by ethical standards. It's also a vision of redemption and a triumph of the human spirit. In short, this nail-biter carries serious moral gravity."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A historical epic that is easily the most ambitious work of Dennis Lehane's career. . . . Lehane has made another leap. As big an advance beyond Mystic River as Mystic River was from his earlier books, The Given Day aspires to be nothing less than the Great American Novel. . . . Its focus is the Boston police strike of 1919 and the bloody riots that resulted, but it's really about the American dream, the resistance to change, the subversion of a country's brightest ideals through its darkest impulses. . . . If Lehane was ever a singles hitter, now he's swinging for the fences."
—Kirkus Reviews

"In dramatizing the Boston Policeman's strike, Dennis Lehane takes on the volatile beginnings of the American century, and, like the master storyteller he is, effortlessly makes that vast canvas come alive. His characters are at once real and heroic, and the action is nonstop. Rollicking, brawling, gritty, political, and always completely absorbing, THE GIVEN DAY is a rich and satisfying epic. Readers, get ready to feast. This is a big book you won't want to put down."
—Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, and Snow Angels

"A brawling, brawny, muscular epic—exactly what great mainstream novels used to be."
— Lee Child