The Given Day is a novel by American writer Dennis Lehane published in September 2008; it is about the early twentieth-century period and set in Boston, Massachusetts, where its actions include the 1919 police strike.

The story has two main characters: Aiden "Danny" Coughlin, an ethnic Irish Boston Police patrolman, whose father is a prominent detective and captain in the department; and Luther Laurence, a talented black amateur baseball player from Columbus, Ohio.

The Boston Social Club (BSC) is the fraternal organization of the BPD patrolmen and its members begin to discuss their grievances and possible actions.

His partner, Steve Coyle, is able to get him to attend some meetings where the BSC hopes to join the American Federation of Labor, a national union.

Luther Laurence and his pregnant wife, Lila, move from Columbus to Tulsa, Oklahoma to start a new life closer to some of her relatives in the Greenwood District.

Laurence and his friend Jessie earn some extra money running numbers for a local bookie and gangster, Deacon Skinner Brocious.

Nora is on her own just as she was five years ago, the men of the BPD are counting on Danny to lead them to a fair wage and working conditions, and Laurence is trying to escape McKenna's clutches and make it back to his wife and child.

Luther reconciles the difficult situation he had run from in Tulsa, and succeeds in returning there to join his wife and recently born child in the Greenwood District.

Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times, "He has written a majestic, fiery epic that moves him far beyond the confines of the crime genre.

"[2] She concludes by writing: The Given Day is a huge, impassioned, intensively researched book that brings history alive by grounding the present in the lessons of the past.