The Last Hurrah is divided into four parts and fourteen chapters. The first three parts relate the tale of Frank Skeffington, former governor of an eastern state and now mayor of a large unidentified city, clearly meant to be Boston, and his campaign for reelection. The fourth section relates the election’s aftermath. Many commentators believe that O’Connor modeled Skeffington on James Michael Curley, several times mayor of Boston, onetime governor of Massachusetts, and the paradigm of the second-generation immigrant politician and big-city political boss. O’Connor’s Skeffington was apparently close enough to the real Curley for the latter to sue for invasion of privacy when The Last Hurrah was turned into a movie of the same name.

The story of what proves to be Frank Skeffington’s last political campaign is told in the third person. Now in his seventies, Skeffington has been mayor long enough to engender considerable popular support among many members of the various ethnic groups that make up the city’s population, not least among his fellow Irish Americans. He has also made many enemies, partly because he represented those first-and second-generation immigrants who displaced the earlier establishment, partly because as a successful politician he had frequently and blatantly rewarded his friends by providing jobs, awarding city contracts, and conducting other marginally legal activities, and partly over personal rivalries and animosities, often long-standing.

To Skeffington, a widower, his only child, Frank Skeffington, Jr., is a failure. Somehow, the latter became a lawyer and, with his father’s support, obtained an adequate position, but in reality he is superficial, lacking in perception as well as ability, preferring nightclubs and dancing to anything more substantial. Rejecting his son, Skeffington instead approaches his nephew, Adam Caulfield, and asks if he would like to observe the impending reelection campaign for mayor. Never close to his uncle before, and knowing his wife, Maeve, influenced by her bigoted father, objects to Skeffington and all his deeds, Adam, who has lost his own parents in an automobile accident, is somewhat reluctant; nevertheless, he agrees, becoming a witness to a passing age in American politics. An old-style political boss, Skeffington has achieved his successes by taking care of the immigrant and working-class voters, primarily through personal contacts. His door is open every morning to anyone who needed a few dollars, a job, help with the law, or whatever was necessary to survive in urban America. His evenings are spent at various ethnic and immigrant social gatherings, at a church, a wake, or a Columbus Day dinner. Politics means organization, down to the ward and precinct levels, and Skeffington’s organization is superb; in the past, that was sufficient. However, Skeffington’s longstanding enemies, notably newspaper publisher Amos Force, are determined defeat him, and have hand-picked a nonentity, Kevin McCluskey, as their candidate of choice. McCluskey seems perfect; he has no record that can be attacked, his family is telegenic, and he is malleable. The only element McCluskey lacks is an equally telegenic dog, so the McCluskey campaign rents an Irish setter for the duration. Until the end, Skeffington and his long-serving advisers assume that victory is theirs, but defeat is total and overwhelming. It is not necessarily caused by overconfidence: rather, the old-style political bosses such as Skeffington have been overtaken by a new generation of voters, products of a new era and of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs who no longer need the Skeffingtons to survive. As these new voters move away from their immigrant roots, Skeffington becomes largely a figure from the past.

The final section details Skeffington’s final hurrah. The evening after his electoral defeat, Skeffington suffers...