The Given Day

Dennis Lehane's epic story of one family in post-WWI Boston is truly a massive achievement. Young police officer Danny Coughlin, son of the police captain and aspiring local legend, goes undercover in the city's slums, where the Bolsheviks are waiting for a hero. Coughlin grows to understand the battles facing him and, with a little help from some eccentric characters, manages to stand up for what he truly believes in. Narrator Michael Boatman delivers a solid performance filled with the rich elements of the story itself--layered characters, moving dialogue, and a powerful message. Boatman never ceases to impress by diving head first into character and losing himself in the story, just as his listeners will surely do. L.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine


Dennis Lehane's epic story of one family in post-WWI Boston is truly a massive achievement. Young police officer Danny Coughlin, son of the police captain and aspiring local legend, goes undercover in the city's slums, where the Bolsheviks are waiting for a hero. Coughlin grows to understand the battles facing him and, with a little help from some eccentric characters, manages to stand up for what he truly believes in. Narrator Michael Boatman delivers a solid performance filled with the rich elements of the story itself--layered characters, moving dialogue, and a powerful message. Boatman never ceases to impress by diving head first into character and losing himself in the story, just as his listeners will surely do. L.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from July 7, 2008
In a splendid flowering of the talent previously demonstrated in his crime fiction (Gone, Baby, Gone
; Mystic River
), 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.
Danny Coughlin, son of police captain Thomas Coughlin, is a devoted young beat cop in Boston's teeming North End. Anxious to prove himself worthy of his legendary father, he agrees to go undercover to infiltrate the Bolsheviks and anarchists who are recruiting the city's poverty-stricken immigrants. He gradually finds himself sympathetic to those living in similar conditions to his fellow policemen, who earn wages well below the poverty line, work in filthy, rat-infested headquarters, are made to pay for their own uniforms and are not compensated for overtime. Danny also rebels by falling in love with the family's spunky Irish immigrant maid, a woman with a past. Danny's counterpart in alienation is Luther Laurence, a spirited black man first encountered in the prologue when Babe Ruth sees him playing softball in Ohio. After Luther kills a man in Tulsa, he flees to Boston, where he becomes intertwined with Danny's family.
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.

Starred review from November 24, 2008
A seasoned TV and film actor, Michael Boatman is an excellent choice for Lehane's historical fiction. Set in Boston at the time of the 1919 policemen's strike, the novel involves a range of characters including Babe Ruth and sundry African-American, Irish, Irish-American, Italian and Italian-American men and women. Boatman creates a clear and engaging persona for each and handles all the accents convincingly. His pacing helps draw listeners into the lives contorted by the social, economic and political turmoil of the era that Lehane describes so exquisitely. Fans of Mystic River
will be swept into this full-bodied production. A Morrow hardcover (Reviews, July 7).