
Author: Sarah Bird
Published by: St. Martin's Press on Apr. 12, 2022
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 432
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: St. Martin's Press
Book Rating: 8/10
Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird’s Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes.
July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight.
Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.
Review:
Hopeful, heartwarming, and atmospheric!
Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is an intriguing tale that sweeps you away between Chicago and Texas during the early 1930s and into the life of Evie Grace Devlin, a young woman who yearns to become a registered nurse, but who after her past as a Vaudeville performer comes to light and she is denied graduation, ends up in the world of competitive dance competitions until tragedy strikes, and she must rethink what’s truly important and where, what and who she’d truly like to be.
The prose is smooth and expressive. The main characters are spirited, resilient, and hardworking. And the plot is a compelling, emotional tale about life, loss, self-discovery, familial drama, social injustices, political unrest, poverty, inequality, heartbreak, courage, romance, and friendship.
Overall, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweet, entertaining, sentimental tale by Bird that was a pleasure to read with a setting I don’t often get a chance to read about and a unique storyline that was informative as well as refreshing.
This novel is available now.
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Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.