The Baroness is Away

I'm on vacation for the next two weeks so there will be no reviews. Look for more the last week in April. Until then - happy reading!

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

The Given Day was my first Dennis Lehane book – I saw Mystic River when they  made it into a movie, but hadn’t read any of his books, despite the great word of mouth. But I happened to pick this one up from the library the other day and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It’s historical fiction, which probably added to my enjoyment, and takes place during the end of WWI. Most of the book is set in Boston and Lehane successfully interweaves the stories of Babe Ruth, before he was traded to the Yankees; Luther Lawrence, a black man who finds himself in trouble wherever he is, yet still manages to beat Babe at baseball and befriend a white cop; and Danny Coughlin, a beat cop and son of a Captain in the Boston PD, who gets involved with unionizing the BPD. The narrative is told in distinct parts that slowly interweave and become increasingly important to each other. One of the things that amazed me the most was the deplorable working conditions that the BPD were forced to endure – they were paid below the poverty level for years and when they tried to unionize to get a fair wage, they were systematically suspended or fired for being “Bolsheviks.” It’s both interesting to see how far we’ve come as a country, and depressing to see how some things will never change. This is a big book, clocking in at 720 pages, but definitely worth the time.