This Week's Book Review

On any given day, most any author can turn out a good book. But it's the great authors who consistently turn out great books. (I'll forgive Lehane for Shutter Island).

This book was obviously a labor of love for Lehane and I believe that he grew up hearing these stories of Bostonian history at the feet of his grandfather. In doing some research on Lehane, I read that he is the son of a union man, which explains a lot about this book and his desire to tell this story. As the daughter of a union man myself, I can totally relate to this. Whether or not you believe in unions, I think Lehane put the question out there quite masterfully by relating the story of the Boston Police strike of 1919.

To call this strike a moral dilemma would be an understatement. You have a police force who was underpaid at a time when the cost of living had gone up over 70%. On top of that, many times they were forced to sleep at the station which was filthy and pest infested. Other laborers were living well post WWI, yet no one would give these civil servants the time of day. When the possibility of joining a union came to fruition, it seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally these workers would be paid equal pay for what they did. Unfortunately, that was not meant to be and a strike ensued causing civil mayhem throughout the streets of Boston. So the real question then became, "Do those in charge of the safety of the public have a right to strike"?

That is the underlying story of Lehane's novel. But the real story, behind the story, is one of the loss of innocence. We meet Danny Coughlin, a young cop in Boston's North End, who realizes that his father, a police captain, isn't as aboveboard as he always thought him to be. We're also introduced to Luther Laurence, whom we first meet on the baseball field with none other than Babe Ruth. He gets involved with some shifty people in Oklahoma and his innocent world comes to an abrupt halt. On top of that, we have a government that promises fairness and equality above all else.....that's an eye opener to all those innocents in 1919. Are the unions the only thing that can possibly bring equality to these people? This is a question Lehane asks but does not answer. You be the judge. Danny Coughlin's official age of innocence will come to an end when he believes the union is the answer and leads his men on a journey that will show them there is no innocence but only guilt in the eyes of an ungrateful and corrupt city.

This year (1918) that Lehane chooses to portray ( the year leading up to the Boston police strike) is one strife with so many bad occurrences. Lehane covers them all.....an economically destroyed country post WWI, domestic terrorism fraught with anarchists and the Spanish flu pandemic just to list a few. He threw so many events into this book that I was surprised he didn't have someone singing Irving Berlin's God Bless America which he wrote in 1918. I love reading these historical fiction novels especially when they're about events in history that I had little or no previous knowledge.

This is an epic novel about political and social upheaval and the right of the haves and the have nots. I've heard that this was meant to be part of a trilogy so it will be interesting to see if this pans out. It's not lost on the reader that there were so many parallels to today's political and social problems. It reminds me of the words in Corinne Rae Bailey's song, "Put Your Records On"...."the more things seem to change, the more things stay the same".

So once again, Lehane hits it out of the ballpark. Which reminds me....I didn't enjoy the Babe Ruth sections of the book. Like his friend George Pellecanos, he can't help writing for men and I guess this was his shout-out to all the baseball fans out there....especially the Red Sox ones.