This was another Lehane that made me think a lot. Please don't get me wrong, I am against any form of racism, but the way the solutions were implemented in Boston to bring about mixing was doomed to failure in my eyes. How is this supposed to work when children are bussed across the city to attend a school where there are mixed races? The question that should have been asked is how to mix neighbourhoods so that different ethnicities can live together and the school would also be mixed. This is hardly possible in America because rich parents send their children to private schools and the public schools (as it seems here in Switzerland) do not have the best reputation.
The second focus is drug dealing and consumption. How easy it is as an Irish population that is against the mixing of the races, but big in the drugs business, to blame all misdeeds on the weak population. They are often supported/covered up by the 'white' police.
Sometimes I felt really sick while reading, with so much injustice. And I ask myself, when I look at today's American politics from a distance, why after so many years the USA has somehow still not come up with a solution to racism. ( )

I read three Dennis Lehane novels pre-library thing (pre 2009): Mystic River, Prayers for Rain, and Sacred. I didn't recall the books thus gave them two stars. Librarything average rating is upper three, low four. Planning on re-reading them I saw Small Mercies had a solid 4.25 average rating. I gave it a shot, and glad I did. Very violent book and well done.
525 members; 4.25 average rating; 2/2/2024 ( )

Mother turned vigilante in the lead up to forced busing. Pretty weird scenario. ( )

The story takes us to Boston and back nearly a half a century. In 1974, when the court ordered school busing, protests erupted throughout many of the white neighborhoods of some previously very segregated cities.... which it seems Boston to have been one of them. Mary Pat Fennessy was a hard-working white woman, the daughter of Irish immigrants, who was trying to keep ahead of the bill collectors. Her relationship with her teenage daughter, Jules, was close, but also trying. She suspected that Jules was keeping secrets. Then one night Jules doesn’t come home, and of course Mary Pat is frantic. The next day at Meadow Lane Manor, a retirement home for the elderly where Mary Pat works as an aide, she learns that the son of Dreamy Williamson, one of her few black co-workers, had died in, what the police are calling, a "mysterious subway incident" that same night. Mary Pat doesn’t really know Dreamy all that well, but she likes her, and is sorry for her loss. It now seems that they have a lot in common...they both have lost children, however they're responses to this event are very different, and... they experience entirely different levels of support from their two communities. Soon they come to learn that these seemingly separate losses; a death and a disappearance...have a connection that neither of them could have ever anticipated. The story mostly focuses on Mary Pat, showing her to be a loving mother and a decent person, but sharing the prejudices of her white, Irish neighborhood toward the people they feel are encroaching on their turf. It’s a hot summer, and tensions are escalating with threats of violence at a fever pitch. Mary Pat keeps trying to find out what happened to Jules and why her, no matter where or what the truth may be. What she discovers is how much she DIDN'T know about her daughter...her neighborhood, and who really has the power and the authority and how long it has gone unchallenged. In spite of their differences and their different circumstances, both mothers are willing to risk everything to learn the truth. It's a good story that will produce a bit of soul-searching. ( )

I stopped reading this midway through. It's just one stereotypical character after another. Sad to see an author so talented tap out. ( )