school busing

Dennis Lehane writes like an angel.  His prose, while not flashy, is still beautiful, even while he writes about racial hatred, drug addiction, beat downs and murders.  Through his compelling way of creating character, he reaches in and gives your heart a squeeze, and I think he writes better than anyone about the highways of grief, loss and heartbreak.  It’s one of those miracles of empathy that only the most powerful of writers possess.

While this story is a simple one, in one way, it’s also full of complicated layers and wrong turns. It’s very basically the story of a worried mother looking for her missing daughter.  The mother, the tough as nails Mary Pat Fennessy, lives in South Boston in 1974, just as school busing is about to break the city into riots and protests.  The kids from Southie will be bussed into the black area of Roxbury, and vice versa.  Mary Pat’s 17 year old daughter, Jules, is scheduled to be on the first bus. read more