Wow, I loved this book. Great characters in an unusual timeframe -- right at the end of WWI. I loved both Danny and Luther whose stories start out independently and seperate and come together as inevitable. Lehane weaves historic figures and events around and throughout this fascinating story. Calvin Coolidge, John (J. Edgar) Hoover, Eugene O'Neill and others appear, but the key historical figure is Babe Ruth. He is woven into the story in a way that provides historic context to the events in the book.I have to go back and read all of Lehane's books now! ( )

The Given Day is the best piece of historical fiction I've ever read. It centers around the 1920's and the Boston Irish. So much of this book brought history to life - baseball and Babe Ruth, racism, the flu epidemic, and labor unions. It's also a reminder that terrorism has been around longer than just our lifetime. ( )

Dennis Lehane is one of the best American mystery writers writing today. So when he turned to historical fiction, I expected a high quality read. The Given Day lived up to my expectations.

Lehane shows his love and appreciation of Boston and its history in his mysteries and thrillers. That characteristic is highlighted here. He's unafraid to show the dirty, unpolished side of an iconic American city. ( )

Gripping story about the history of the Boston police force and how they came to be unionized. Also the story of a black family and the discrimination they faced during that time. Excellent! ( )

In The Given Day, Dennis Lehane attempts to do for Boston what E.L. Doctorow did for New York in Ragtime. The characters are numerous and diverse; their stories are sprinkled with imagined encounters with actual historical figures, and set against a background of historic events in Boston at the end of WWI. I don't read much fiction, but I enjoyed this book enough to read it straight through, rather than my usual practice of juggling 6-8 different books. And yet, I am left with a nagging sense of disappointment. This book could have been so much better.

Lehane ties in enough historical threads to create those "aha" moments where you realize that events you learned about in various history books actually occurred in the same time and place, but he lacks Doctorow's ability to take you there with all of your senses. Lehane isn't particularly interested in the architecture, geographic setting, or local culture that make one place stand out from another. For example, he repeatedly emphasizes how much one character enjoys living in Boston's Italian community, but aside from the ethnicity of the names, the reader doesn't really experience that environment.

The female characters are cardboard cutouts, encountered only through the observations of their male acquaintances. Aside from Luther, the black characters don't fare much better. And the flow of the story is constantly interrupted by typos, anachronisms (paramedics administering IVs in 1918?), and discontinuities. Within the span of a few pages, one character has never done something in a particular way, and then he has always done it that way. A few pages after Lieutenant Eddie McKenna plans his next encounter with Luther, addressing him by his full name, Luther is startled to be called by that name in the street. It is not surprising that these errors would creep in over the course of writing 700 pages, but I would expect an editor to find them and get them cleaned up. ( )