![]() “People I saw every day were using the n-word,” he says. As a kid, he was exposed to a lot of casual racism. Lehane grew up in the rough-and-tumble Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, one of five children raised by Irish immigrant parents. “The story of Boston is the story of busing.” ![]() “I had wanted to address school busing my entire career,” Lehane says. Small Mercies is set in Boston in 1974, when the city’s public schools were ordered by a court to desegregate and student busing was put into effect, sparking protests and riots. If it’s my last I think it’s a good bookend-a nice mic drop.” This could be my last book, or I could wake up tomorrow and have a story I have to tell. “The better you are at this, the harder it gets. “Writing prose got harder for me with every book,” Lehane says. ![]() He even wonders whether Small Mercies, his new novel publishing in April, could be his last. ![]() Though Lehane’s literary success is immense-his books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, according to Harper, his publisher, and have been translated into 37 languages-the demands of writing novels have taken their toll. Lehane has written 13 novels, several of which ( Gone, Baby, Gone Mystic River Shutter Island) have been turned into movies, and has worked on shows including The Wire and Mr. “The word hope, I’d bet, shows up more in my books than anything other than the f-bomb. As dark as my books get, they’re always about the hope that can push up through the darkness,” Dennis Lehane says via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. ![]()
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May 2023
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