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GIVEN DAY, THE by Dennis Lehane - SIGNED FIRST EDITION BOOKSee all titles by Dennis Lehane.
"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.
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.
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Assurance of Quality
VJ Books provides the finest in signed first editions and collectible books. In so doing, we consistently inspect and grade each book using professional standards. Prior to leaving our warehouse, each item is prepared to ensure safe delivery.
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