The Red Coat

by Dolley Carlson

Think Downton Abbey, set in the heart of Boston

Irish domestic worker Norah King's decision to ask her wealthy employer, Caroline Parker, for an elegant red coat that the Beacon Hill matriarch has marked for donation ignites a series of events that neither woman could have fathomed. The unlikely exchange will impact their respective daughters and families for generations to come, from the coat's original owner, marriage-minded collegian Cordelia Parker, to the determined and spirited King sisters of South Boston, Rosemary, Kay, and Rita. As all of these young women experience the realities of life – love and loss, conflict and joy, class prejudices and unexpected prospects – the red coat reveals the distinction between cultures, generations, and landscapes in Boston during the 1940s and 50s, a time of change, challenge, and opportunity.

Meet the proud, working-class Irish and staid, upper-class Brahmins through the contrasting lives of these two families and their friends and neighbors. See how the Parkers and the Kings each overcome sudden tragedy with resolve and triumph. And witness the profound impact of a mother’s heart on her children’s souls. Carlson brings us front and center with her knowing weave of Celtic passion – both tragic and joyful – words of wisdom, romance, humor, and historical events. Dive into Boston feet first! The Red Coat is a rich novel that chronicles the legacy of Boston from both sides of the city, Southie and the Hill.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Book Club, Audiobook, Novels, Literary Fiction

483 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 11, 2014

Reviews

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a coat that has been passed down from sister to sister in Pre/Post WWII Boston. I enjoyed the cultural references and related to many of them. However, the pictures and small articles on the side of many pages were a distraction and made me question if this was fiction or a memoire.

I do hope this author will continue the story of the King/Donnley family. And I would also love to read what happens to Cordelia Parker and her family back in Boston. Will both families meet up again?

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Keeping things honest, I have to admit I am from South Boston lived there for 32 years. I grew up in the area where the main characters lived.
outside of that, I found this book to be well written, I loved all the characters, the changes they went through and the growth of the characters would not let me put the book down.

I wanted to have someone who did not grow up in Southie read it. I wanted ti be sure my opinion wasn't totally biased. My husband grew up in New York City and had never been to South Boston until he met me.He rarely reads fiction, prefers to read non fiction..
He said the book gave him a better idea of how I grew up and why I am how I am.
More importantly he found it to be a great peek into life in Boston at that time of the story. He enjoyed it immensely./
Congratulations Ms. Carlson. I look forward to reading more from you hopefully the Kings and about Caroline Parker. I didn't like her when I first met her but by the end of the book I had changed my mind.

[May · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a Delightful Novel!

This book reads like a Family diary! The specific details of Boston’s locations, pertinent to the moment of the story, as accompanied by the period photographs, convinced me that this was more biographical than fiction. Very nicely done!!

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up.

This book was OK, not great. The premise is that a beautiful red coat, first owned by a privileged young woman, given to an Irish housekeeper by her mother, and then handed down to her three daughters, plays a pivotal role in each of their lives. The author dwells as nauseum on the Irish family’s Catholic faith and lives in South Boston. The first section about the matriarch Norah, who spoke in Irish colloquialisms, got old after a while. The subsequent sections were better, but not by much. Nothing really ever happens in the book. People just live their lives, and somehow this red coat becomes the be all and end all of their existence. That must be some coat!
Interspersed among the prose are little factoids about Boston and supposedly vintage photos. Sometimes these are the most interesting part of the story. The book also could easily have been 50-100 pages shorter. At time it dragged and meandered meaninglessly.
This book seemed promising at the beginning but eventually disappointed.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 ***

I really enjoyed this novel of South Boston's Irish community in the 1940s. As a transplant to Boston, I have been trying to absorb the nuances of this culture for sixteen years and through the eyes of Norah King an immigrant from Ireland arriving and thriving in South Boston far away from her family as she creates a wonderful home and example of how to live for her children, I finally begin to understand more about the folks I have met here from all economic strata and ethnic backgrounds. The wonderful asides (and thumbnail pictures!) of the historic buildings and their importance to the Boston community brought history alive.

[Ellen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish. This is not a “Novel of Boston” it’s a book of lists. Every damn thing anyone owned, ate, or saw is listed in mind-numbing detail.

For example: “... the Donnellys relished every square inch: a living room, three bedrooms, small eat-in kitchen with at big, old-fashioned, black iron stove,a walk-in pantry, formal dining room, large bath with a claw foot tub, pedestal sink, and pull-chain toilet, and a big back porch”. There was a list inside of this list, and this was one sentence! Is the “pull-chain toilet” really necessary to the storyline? This isn’t story, it’s an inventory.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not Irish Catholic and have never even set foot in Boston, but I loved this book. Yes, it might have rambled a bit in sections and it is really a disappointment that Rosemary just disappears half way in and she leaves the Cordelia/David story unfinished. Even with all that, the book is charming and really puts you in mid-century Boston.

[Darla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully tailored red coat is waiting to be sent to a charity organization in the front hall of a Beacon Hill mansion in Boston. The scrubwoman asks the lady of the house is she may take it for her daughter. Thus begins the saga of the red coat. This novel is rich with historical detail and pictures of Boston landmarks. My favorite character in the book was the red coat. In my opinion, there was a bit too much additional info and the story of the coat was overshadowed. Well researched, though, and sure to bring back some memories for those who grew up in South Boston.

Thank you to Two Rivers and Edelweiss for the opportunity to review a digital ARC of this novel.

[Lisa Lynch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though the book had a promising start I found it frustrating and too full of boring details to really keep the momentum going. I live in Boston now but did not grow up here and I can't imagine this book being enjoyable or interesting to anyone not connected to South Boston. The story was lost by too many details- everything they wore or ate was painstakingly described - and glamourized "Southie" and the Catholic Church past the point of believability. There really was no story- just two average boring families connected by one piece of cast off clothing!

[Patricia Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not want this book to end. In fact, the last 100 pages or so had me hesitating to pick it back up, because I knew it meant it would end soon. This is one of those books that window-peeks inside the lives of families. As in every family, some members I liked, some I didn’t.

I so enjoyed Norah and most everyone in her family, although I could have choked her husband, John Joseph. I enjoyed her children and watching them evolve into adults. While I didn’t grow up anywhere near Boston, I could easily relate to the times of this novel. Life was simpler then; the games the kids played, family values, school and religion, good manners and propriety, everything was simpler then.

Character development was superb, and the story was engaging. Just as history and fiction were intertwined in this novel, the author successfully wove the red coat as a connection between several characters. There were challenges and trials, but there was also love and happiness.

This novel is one I can easily recommend.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great trip down memory lane for me! I really enjoyed this book about living in 'Southie,' the Irish section of Boston in the 40's and 50's. I grew up about 15 miles south of Boston later than that, but so many places, expressions, and events resonated true for me, that it often brought a smile to my face. Many of the places I had been to with my family - Filene's Basement (fighting for what you'd find), Jordan Marsh (the Christmas windows, visiting Santa, & the famous muffins!), RH Stearns, Grants, Paragon Park in Hull, Durgan Park Restaurant, Union Oyster House, Park St. Church, Swan Boats, and many more. I could hear my mother saying some of the expressions in the book - 'too big for your britches', 'you look like a ragamuffin', 'who do you think you are?' Although I did not go to Parochial school, being brought up Catholic and going to CCD, I remembered many strict warnings by the nuns/teachers about doctrine or practices - if you took Communion and had sinned, the priest could tell bc your tongue would be black! Do NOT chew the host; that's Christ's body! Why did we believe these things? We were kids and we just did! Making your First Communion was a huge thing as well as dressing up in your very best for Easter - new everything! Those descriptions were spot on.

This multi-generational story of one family captured the essence of growing up poor, but rich with family and friends, at a time when hard work, manners, honesty, and integrity were highly regarded and practiced. The story moved a bit slowly, but since I was thoroughly enjoying all the pictures and blurbs on the side of the pages, it did not bother me. I liked all the characters, although I missed a few of them as they married and moved out of state and were just dropped from the story. I questioned what happened to the 2 youngest boys - an orphanage? No family member takes them in? I also thought the red coat was going to have a bigger impact in the story than it did. The title and story description made it sound that way - the coat "will impact their respective daughters and families for generations to come..." I expected more of an impact.

I was confused as to whether the characters were purely fictional or real people. I couldn't find anything online indicating the characters actually existed, but then there would be photographs of some of the characters throughout the book, say published in the Boston Globe, which led me to believe they were real. Not sure. Dolley, if you read this, can you comment?

All in all, a fun and sentimental read for me!

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the first stories that I can remember being assigned to write in grammar school was telling the tale of an object passing through multiple hands. I chose a dollar bill, which I found out later was a pretty common choice. Goodreads has a listing of sixty-three novels that they group as:

The Best Books That Follow an Object through Time

One with which I was familiar was Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx. Others listed include The Picture of Dorian Gray and Moby-Dick; I am not sure what the "object" was in those (although, I have never actually read Moby-Dick).

In Dolley Carson's The Red Coat: A Novel of Boston, the object is a beautiful red woman's coat. The book is set principally in Boston in the 1940s. During the course of the story, the coat belongs to three women and is borrowed briefly by a fourth. It is originally owned by Cordelia Parker, daughter of a wealthy and respected family who live on Beacon Hill, traditionally the most exclusively upscale neighborhood in Boston. These are the Protestant leaders of Boston society. Cordelia's beloved mother purchased the coat at a well-known Boston store. The mother has observed that Cordelia, a student at Radcliffe,
no longer wears the coat and decides to donate it to charity. Norah King happens to be working temporarily scrubbing floors at the Parkers' house, and asks if she can have the coat for her oldest daughter, Rosemary, and Mrs. Parker gives it to her.

What Mrs. Parker had not realized is that her daughter Cordelia had not been wearing the red coat not because she did not value it but because she valued it so much. She had been wearing it when the young man she fancied had put his arm around her. Cordelia is upset by the loss of the coat and throughout the book often thinks that her life would have been different if she had kept possession of the coat.

Cordelia is one of the central characters in this story. Most of the others are members of the family to whom the coat was given. Norah King lives in South Boston, the hub of Irish life in Boston. The Kings have eight living children. The father of the family, an ill-tempered man given to drink, works in a foundry. He gets increasingly abusive as the book goes on.

The novel concentrates on the King women, Norah and her daughters Rosemary, Kay, and Rita. The sons receive much less attention; in fact, they largely disappear from the story. The daughters marry and have families of their own. Their Catholic faith is a constant presence in their lives.

The red coat is, of course, also a connecting thread in the book, but less so than I anticipated. Its absence from Cordelia's life seems more important than its presence in the life of the Kings.

The subtitle is very important. This is indeed "a novel of Boston." I have lived in Boston most of my life and I enjoyed the many references to Boston, especially in the time from just before I was born and through most of my childhood. It is also very much a portrait of American life in the 1940s and 1950s, including the tremendous impact of World War II.

Late in the book, the reader discovers that the third-person narration is supposed to be by one of the characters in the book, making it a sort of memoir, except that the ostensible narrator would not have known about most of the details of the story.

There are inserts scattered through the book. Many of them are small photographs, mostly of places in Boston. Some of the photographs purport to be pictures of people in the story: for example, a photograph of a boxer labeled:

Timothy A. King
"The Quincy Chiller,
knocks 'em out cold,
every time."
THE BOSTON GLOBE

(One of the inserts, a picture of a sign advertising Patten's Restaurant, is printed upside-down.)

There are also inserts of italicized text, mentioning some sidelight to the story, for example:

Norah Foley and her sister Mary looked after their dewy, fair-skinned beauty with the greatest of care, as instructed by their mother, Barbara Addley Foley. "Girls, you're to wash your faces, mornin' and night, finish with the cool rinse and when the sun is shinin', never let it get a peek at your fair prettiness. Don a hat."

I don't know what I would have thought of this book if I were not so familiar with the background. I do think that it is a never-less-than-interesting look at a time and place that is especially meaningful to me. I believe that many readers of other backgrounds would enjoy this as well.



.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this novel. I grew attached to some characters and wanted more details but it was really about the journey of that fabulous red coat. I loved the details in the margins, it gave genuine historical references or clarified a point in the story. As a Catholic I related to the many of the family stories about communion, Easter and catholic school. It would be interesting to see if there are more stories of Boston.

[Cheryl Crotty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book that, although long, I did not want it to end. Such good writing about a place and time frame that I am so familiar with. It was a book that stirred up old memories, brought out some history of a section of Boston that I was not very familiar with, Southie, and it was also a beautiful story about generations of a family. I loved it.

[Suzanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although the author certainly captured the unique culture of the South Boston Irish mid-twentieth century, the storyline just didn't engage me . There are several local references to people and places, including vintage photographs, which might be of interest to Bostonians of a certain age.

[Heather Carnevale · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so poorly written, I couldn't finish it. Poor author needed a SERIOUS editor. Trite, over-written with two-dimensional characters left me more hungry than three hours after eating Chinese food. Hungry for a good book, not this garbage.

[Gina Gesamondo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really didn’t enjoy this book. Having lived in Southie I should have loved it but there was zero plot. It was just a way to mention every little place and business in the area.

[Giselle Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will be a delight for readers interested in the history of Boston and the Irish immigrants who were a large part of Boston population. This story begins pre-WWII and focuses on two families. One Irish and one WASP. Throughout the story lives are intertwined by the "Red Coat" which was given to an Irish woman by a WASP when she was doing some spring cleaning for her. The tale is very well told and you find yourself relating to almost all of your characters. The divide between Catholics and Protestants is evident as well as immigrants between immigrants. Throughout the tale you see them learning to live together and share each other's lives.

I'm not telling you anymore but this book is well worth the read.

This is the author's first novel, she has written several non-fiction titles that I may be looking for to read.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would not have finished this book but decided to listen to the audio since it was my book group’s pick. I thought it was too boring. Meh

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good and interesting read. It was a little tough to get into because there are so many characters and lots of similar names. However, once I settled in, I was very in the moment and loving the city of Boston. In addition to crafting an interesting novel with characters you want to know more about, the author gives you a real history of Boston with side notes on many of the pages. Worth the read.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

First I want to thank Chris Sullivan for ordering "The Red Coat" by Dolley Carlson for the DeGroodt Library at my request. If I could have given this book more than 5 stars I would have. I liked it that much. I especially liked the added pictures of many Boston landmarks included in the story of the King Family of South Boston. It brought back many memories of places I love in Boston; being a Bostonian at heart and now a transplanted Floridian. I hope my friends and family still in New England read this and are able to pick up this book and enjoy it like I have. It is an exceptional read.

[Carol Delsignore · Rating 5 out of 5]

In October 2024, I found out the author lived on my street. I invited Dolley to be a special guest at our bookclub to share about her book and life, which are completely intertwined. She was enthralling. After our meal of clam chowder, Irish soda bread (recipe in the book) and Boston cream pie, Dolley regaled us with anecdotes (sometimes in an authentic Irish brogue or Boston accent), photos, poems and songs which she drew upon to write this beautiful story of her beloved Boston. The book is marvelous as was my new friend and author, Dolley Carlson.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

**This book is a nostalgic journey for all Irish Catholics who have ever lived in South Boston. In fact Boston is the main character of The Red Coat and the city prevails at all costs. It is also the story of the King family women from their very turbulent childhood to their adulthood. What is constant is their faith, their love and respect for each other and a beautiful red coat. That coat became a symbol of their mother’s love, their sisterhood and unbeknownst to them a friendship with the coat’s original owner.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this wonderful book by my friend Dolley Carlson, set in her beloved Boston. It is a heartfelt book that captures the love and loyalty of family, specifically between mothers & daughters and sisters and the special connection that women have throughout their lives. It tells how one beautiful red coat changed the course of their lives for generations and was a metaphor for love, sacrifice and connection.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. My grandparents came to America from Ireland and settled in Charlestown, MA. I could relate to what life must have been like for Dolley's characters even though they were living in South Boston.
When the characters traveled into downtown Boston it brought back a lot of memories of stores and places long gone. This novel made me put myself in my grandparents shoes, life was not easy for them. I would definitely recommend!

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although there were parts of this book I didn’t like (the husband/father), I’m very glad I read it. My mother grew up in NYC, and was Irish Catholic. I learned a lot about terms my mother said, ideas about the church and the importance of First Holy Communion. The vehicle of the red coat was an excellent one. I’m sure life in Boston was similar to that in NY back in the day.

[Marie De Paolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brought back memories

The author stays true to Boston and the South Boston Irish. She has a very easy style of writing . Brought back a lot of memories from my childhood . And oh those nuns

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion this is the best book I have read in a long time!
I absolutely loved it. Terri you have to read it! Any one else raised Catholic needs to read it . And even non-Catholics may enjoy it. So, so good!

[Jeanne Wegman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was sort of a stroll down memory lane

The story was great! I grew up in Boston not in Southie but in neighboring Dorchester. Many of the places mentioned were still around when I was a child. Lots of the sayings such as Jesus,Mary &Joseph were ones I often heard.

[Judith Tepe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now that I am a resident of South Boston, I really appreciated the historical fiction and scenes in my back yard.