The Given Day Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, The Great Molasses Flood and our BookBrowse Review of The Given Day.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

Introduction

From the New York Times bestselling author comes a beautifully written novel set in Boston at the end of the Great War. The Given Day is an unflinching, utterly spectacular family epic that captures the political unrest of a nation dangling between a well-patterned past and an unpredictable future.


Questions for Discussion

1. The Given Day transports readers to 1918 Boston and touches on the lives of two families—one black, one white—as they are swept up in the maelstrom of history. How are their experiences similar? How are they different?
2. Dennis Lehane writes The Given Day from the perspectives of two very different men. What brings Luther Laurence and Danny Coughlin together? Does their friendship ring true?
3. One of the themes of the book is the notion of family—both the blood kind and the kind a person willingly creates on his own. How are these ideas of family manifested? Do you see one as being more important than the other? Can a person belong to two kinds of family at the same time?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Harper Perennial. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.