Book Review: Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

Small Mercies
by
Dennis Lehane

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Nothing will stop Mary Pat Fennessy from finding her missing teenage daughter. That’s a really short description of what happens in Dennis Lehane’s newest book, Small Mercies. Set in the predominantly Irish projects of South Boston during the summer of 1974, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. has ordered the desegregation of the largely white South Boston High School and the largely Black Roxbury High School. In the fall, students from South Boston will be bused to Roxbury and Roxbury students will be bused to South Boston.

The entire South Boston community opposes the ruling, including Jules Fennessy, who is about to begin her senior year, and especially Marty Butler, head of the Irish mob. Mary Pat and neighbors, under Marty’s direction, are ready to protest downtown.

Then Jules goes missing on the same night that Augustus Williamson, a Black teenager is killed on a subway platform in South Boston. Are the two events related?

Jules is all Mary Pat has left. Her first husband, a career criminal, died, her son died after serving in Viet Nam and her current husband has moved out. She feels these heavy losses, but she’s Southie through and through and fears no one.

Small Mercies is a study of both racism and the South Boston community, whose beliefs and lives overlap in infinite ways and whose families go back generations. They take care of their own, but they fight with each other just as easily. They form complex alliances and look the other way if they need to. And they absolutely don’t want to desegregate. They want to be left alone, just as they imagine the Blacks in Roxbury want to be left alone.

The second story is about Augustus’s death and Marty Butler’s power, investigated by Detective Bobby Coyne. Through both stories, readers learn about personal battles with alcohol and drug abuse and the infiltration of drugs in South Boston.

This is my first Dennis Lehane book and I didn’t know what to expect. He’s an excellent writer and I was moved by how deeply he went into Mary Pat’s character. She’s the ultimate flawed person and makes a lot of questionable decisions, but by the end, I felt like I understood her. The book takes a definite turn about halfway through, with both plot development and an escalation of violence. This is definitely a vigilante story, for readers who are comfortable with graphic scenes.

I enjoyed Small Mercies, but I also felt depressed after I finished. It’s a complicated picture of both hopelessness and hope. I’ve recovered, but now I’m ready to read something lighter.

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