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bookshelf_by_britt's review against another edition
4.0
Narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier opens with Evie Grace Devlin wondering how she became the person who would cause a man to kill himself. Evie has not had an easy childhood, but she has dreams to become a nurse. However, just before her pinning ceremony her past comes to light and she is removed from nursing school without her pin.
Evie returns home and finds her Uncle Jake running a dance marathon instead of teaching dances to debutantes. Evie is pulled into the dance marathon world and is paired with the marathon's golden boy, Zave. Zave knew Evie's father, which draws them even closer together. Will this couple fall in love and become the dance marathon's golden couple?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Evie returns home and finds her Uncle Jake running a dance marathon instead of teaching dances to debutantes. Evie is pulled into the dance marathon world and is paired with the marathon's golden boy, Zave. Zave knew Evie's father, which draws them even closer together. Will this couple fall in love and become the dance marathon's golden couple?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
cfpharmd's review against another edition
4.0
Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier was a refreshing historical read set during the Depression Era Dance Marathon craze which was both interesting and musically enriching. It took me a little longer to get through than I typically would but only because I spent so much time pulling up YouTube videos of the period dances and creating my big band play list! Working in a young woman's fight to overcome her beginnings, Depression era financial struggles, political swing with FDR's presidential bid, homosexuality views of the time, and nursing and mental health practices, Nurse Gravy's story painted a vibrant picture of a time past. Put on a swishy dress, strap on your dancing shoes, caffeinate, and settle in for a Dance Marathon for the ages!
Thank you #NetGalley and @StMartinsPress for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
Thank you #NetGalley and @StMartinsPress for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
bhorne's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
micasreads's review against another edition
3.0
Thanks to Sarah Bird, St. Martin's Press, and Sarah Bird for the chance to read this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was published on April 12, 2022.
Evie Devlin was raised by a narcissistic mother who spoke badly of her father for joining the military and then having the nerve to die. In order to escape, Evie lies to get into nursing school as her way out. When the Director of the school receives information about a shady part of Evie's past, she denies her the chance to fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse. After returning to the area she grew up in and ensuring her Grandma is taken care of when she is diagnosed with pneumonia, Evie travels to Houston and becomes a nurse for a dance marathon.
In 1932, dance marathons were an important way for young people suffering during the Depression to ensure that they had food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads. Evie becomes the official nurse for a dance group and eventually part of the act when she falls for the main dancer, Zane. Evie learns to handle the days as they come and attempts to figure out how to receive the registered nurse pin she worked so hard for. Evie learns the hard way that you have to make do with the cards you're dealt until the chance to change them pops up.
This is a bit of a different story for me and I felt it took me far longer than it really should have. It seemed that there were times when whole passages could have been edited out to help the flow of the story. All in all, it was a sweet story that helped pass the time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Homophobia, and Suicide attempt
txreader's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
jhscolloquium's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Author Sarah Bird says Last Dance on the Starlight Pier was inspired by her mother, who grew up during the Great Depression. One of her fondest memories was of a dance marathon held at the Grange Hall in the little Indiana town in which she grew up, and she made it sound like a wonderful community event. For five cents, audience members could watch dancers moving about the dance floor, even while asleep. But her mother's portrayal of the marathon was diametrically opposed to the "unrelievedly grim" depiction of dance marathons in the classic Hollywood film, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" starring Jane Fonda. Bird had the strong sense that there was more to the story.
Her research confirmed that the movie did not address the Depression, and Bird believes it is imperative to understand "how desperate and how dire the times were." Vast numbers of Americans were unemployed and had lost their entire savings, dust storms were ravaging the Great Plains, and families could not afford to feed their children so there were scores of young teenagers riding the rails without a home. She learned that the longest dance marathon on record lasted for five-and-a-half months. The contestants were only allowed to lie down and rest in eleven-minute intervals, so successful contestants learned to dance while sound asleep, led around the dance floor by their partner.
Marathons were extremely popular from 1930-34 and employed twenty thousand people across the country, including promoters, floor judges, trainers, nurses, and "sloppers" who fed everyone involved. Contestants were provided as much food as they wanted, which also made them popular because people were hungry. While the dancers were on the floor, they were required to keep moving, so they learned to perform basic hygiene tasks, e.g., shaving, while in motion. It is a chapter in American history that has been largely forgotten, much to Bird's puzzlement.
Bird discovered that a large marathon was held in Galveston, Texas, a city of dark glamour in the 1920's and 1930's. Bootleg sales of liquor continued unimpeded, despite Prohibition, with the infamous Beach Gang running the liquor trade. They imported high quality spirits, including French champagne. During that same period, an entertainment empire was built in Galveston by a local family, which insulated the city from the ravages of the Depression. It was dubbed "the Playground of the Southwest" -- a place where "the Depression was a black-and-white photo in a newspaper of men shivering in a bread line somewhere up north." Bird realized that Galveston would provide the perfect setting for much of Last Dance on the Starlight Pier.
Indeed, the book opens on Sunday, July 3, 1932, at 4:25 a.m. in Galveston and the beautiful Starlight Palace has erupted in flames. The action immediately moves back three years to June 1929 when Evie Grace Devlin is beginning her studies at St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing. She has won a scholarship and is ecstatic about embarking on a new chapter of her life. No one affiliated with the school knows that twenty-one-year-old Evie hails from Houston's Vinegar Hill and is the daughter of Vaudevillians. Evie has gained admission to the school under false pretenses and must ensure that the nuns who will be her teachers never find out that after her father's early death, when Evie was just five years old, her mother forced her to dance five shows a day, and perform in humiliating and degrading shows in order to bring in money. On her first day at school, Evie meets her classmate, Sofie Amadeo, whose father and uncles are Galveston's most notorious and powerful gangsters, and they become fast friends.
Evie studies diligently and excels, despite the Director's efforts to bully her and force her to quit. Evie is given the worst assignments, but keeps her head down and learns to be an excellent nurse. She is also enlisted by the Amadeos to discretely "splint the mangled finger of card cheats, put casts on the broken legs of deadbeat debtors, and stitch up the pulverized faces of embezzling club managers." But she never mentions those tasks to Sofie. Evie is the school's "token poor Protestant" and in the evenings, she teaches her classmates not only about poverty, but how to dance. In her first-person narrative, Evie says she "was supremely happy. For the first time in my life I loved what I was doing, I had friends, hunger was just a memory to share, . . ." and she believed that no one could take any of it from her. Evie and Sofie plan to room together in a boarding house near the hospital where they will be working. But her happiness is short-lived because on the very day she is to graduate and receive the pin that enables her to launch her nursing career, she is summoned to the Director's office and informed that her deception has been discovered. There will be no pin or career for Evie.
Evie returns to Houston, Vinegar Hill, and her narcissistic, abusive mother, Mamie. But not for long. She visits the Bennett Academy of Dance and her "uncle" Jake, her father's best friend, who offers her a job as a nurse. "Pops Wyatt Promotions" now covers Jake's name on the office sign and the arena is packed. A band is playing and Evie has to make her way through the spectators to see the couples circling the gym with numbers pinned onto the back of their shirts and blouses. "And they were all haggard with exhaustion." Uncle Jake is running a dance marathon and enlists Evie to play the role of nurse. But, of course, she is a trained nurse and cannot simply pretend. Instead, she cares for the dancers, doing whatever she can to help them survive the inhumane conditions . . . and keep dancing.
From that point in the story, <em>Last Dance on the Starlight Pier<em> is an epic adventure about desperate measures in desperate times featuring a disparate group of supporting characters who come together and manage to become a family. It is a story about resilience and love. The dance troupe is comprised of the "horses" (the professionals who travel around the country participating in marathons because they draw crowds), as well as the down-on-their-luck locals who scrape together the entrance fee with dreams of outlasting the other contestants and claiming the much-needed prize money. Amateur, untrained dancers clung to the promise that if they could just keep moving long enough, enduring unimaginable conditions, rules, and unscrupulous judges, they could triumph. Bird compassionately illustrates the point by including several such couples in the book.
Evie is entranced by one of the horses, Zave -- the undisputed star of the marathons. He is as handsome as a movie matinee idol, debonair, and dances beautifully. (Of course, he was taught to dance by Evie's late father.) He expertly manipulates his audiences, convincing the swooning women to throw money on the dance floor during the "silver showers" portion of the marathons. When Zave needs medical attention, Evie is called upon to provide it in order to keep him dancing so the marathon will not have to shut down. Soon, Evie's dancing skills come to light and she becomes his partner. They fall in love and Evie dreams about what a future with Zave might be like. But he insists that he would never be a good husband to her and it isn't until his former partner, Cleo, gives Evie a glimpse of an aspect of Zave's life that he keeps hidden that Evie understands. Undaunted, her insistence upon pursuing a possible solution is misguided and nearly destroys her relationship with Zave.
Bird keeps the action moving at a steady pace as Evie and the other dancers navigate the rigors of the marathons with varying degrees of success. Evie is a sympathetic character -- a young woman who never gives up her dream of one day being a registered nurse working in a hospital, caring for her patients in the ways she could not care for or save her beloved father. She is gutsy, resourceful, and becomes fond and protective of her fellow dancers. She rushes to her grandmother's side when she learns that the older woman is suffering from dust pneumonia, a life-threatening disease caused by inhalation of the dust that blew through the plains, turning day into night and ravaging crops. Readers will cheer for Evie as she refuses to give up on herself or those she cares about, and refuses to be further manipulated and used by the despicable Mamie.
Bird convincingly takes readers along on Evie's journey as she learns about and becomes part of the marathon company, and injects intrigue into the story, as well, as the narrative races toward that July morning and the raging fire in the Starlight Palace. Situated at the end of the Starlight Pier in Galveston, Bird has constructed a clever storyline about graft and corruption centered around the Amadeo family's purported gala reopening of their biggest white elephant.
Bird completed her research and began writing the book during the early days of the pandemic, another dark time in U.S. history. The parallels between the two time periods -- both crises brought about, in significant part, by a failure of competent leadership -- were not lost on Bird, who says the lesson she took away from her mother's stories, her research, and the experience of writing the book during those terrifying and isolating days is that if people can come together during challenging times, there is nothing that can't be accomplished. She demonstrates that lesson through the delightfully eclectic and relatable cast of characters that populate Last Dance on the Starlight Pier. It is an engrossing and illuminating work of historical fiction exploring an overlooked aspect of American history.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
Her research confirmed that the movie did not address the Depression, and Bird believes it is imperative to understand "how desperate and how dire the times were." Vast numbers of Americans were unemployed and had lost their entire savings, dust storms were ravaging the Great Plains, and families could not afford to feed their children so there were scores of young teenagers riding the rails without a home. She learned that the longest dance marathon on record lasted for five-and-a-half months. The contestants were only allowed to lie down and rest in eleven-minute intervals, so successful contestants learned to dance while sound asleep, led around the dance floor by their partner.
Marathons were extremely popular from 1930-34 and employed twenty thousand people across the country, including promoters, floor judges, trainers, nurses, and "sloppers" who fed everyone involved. Contestants were provided as much food as they wanted, which also made them popular because people were hungry. While the dancers were on the floor, they were required to keep moving, so they learned to perform basic hygiene tasks, e.g., shaving, while in motion. It is a chapter in American history that has been largely forgotten, much to Bird's puzzlement.
Bird discovered that a large marathon was held in Galveston, Texas, a city of dark glamour in the 1920's and 1930's. Bootleg sales of liquor continued unimpeded, despite Prohibition, with the infamous Beach Gang running the liquor trade. They imported high quality spirits, including French champagne. During that same period, an entertainment empire was built in Galveston by a local family, which insulated the city from the ravages of the Depression. It was dubbed "the Playground of the Southwest" -- a place where "the Depression was a black-and-white photo in a newspaper of men shivering in a bread line somewhere up north." Bird realized that Galveston would provide the perfect setting for much of Last Dance on the Starlight Pier.
Indeed, the book opens on Sunday, July 3, 1932, at 4:25 a.m. in Galveston and the beautiful Starlight Palace has erupted in flames. The action immediately moves back three years to June 1929 when Evie Grace Devlin is beginning her studies at St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing. She has won a scholarship and is ecstatic about embarking on a new chapter of her life. No one affiliated with the school knows that twenty-one-year-old Evie hails from Houston's Vinegar Hill and is the daughter of Vaudevillians. Evie has gained admission to the school under false pretenses and must ensure that the nuns who will be her teachers never find out that after her father's early death, when Evie was just five years old, her mother forced her to dance five shows a day, and perform in humiliating and degrading shows in order to bring in money. On her first day at school, Evie meets her classmate, Sofie Amadeo, whose father and uncles are Galveston's most notorious and powerful gangsters, and they become fast friends.
Evie studies diligently and excels, despite the Director's efforts to bully her and force her to quit. Evie is given the worst assignments, but keeps her head down and learns to be an excellent nurse. She is also enlisted by the Amadeos to discretely "splint the mangled finger of card cheats, put casts on the broken legs of deadbeat debtors, and stitch up the pulverized faces of embezzling club managers." But she never mentions those tasks to Sofie. Evie is the school's "token poor Protestant" and in the evenings, she teaches her classmates not only about poverty, but how to dance. In her first-person narrative, Evie says she "was supremely happy. For the first time in my life I loved what I was doing, I had friends, hunger was just a memory to share, . . ." and she believed that no one could take any of it from her. Evie and Sofie plan to room together in a boarding house near the hospital where they will be working. But her happiness is short-lived because on the very day she is to graduate and receive the pin that enables her to launch her nursing career, she is summoned to the Director's office and informed that her deception has been discovered. There will be no pin or career for Evie.
Evie returns to Houston, Vinegar Hill, and her narcissistic, abusive mother, Mamie. But not for long. She visits the Bennett Academy of Dance and her "uncle" Jake, her father's best friend, who offers her a job as a nurse. "Pops Wyatt Promotions" now covers Jake's name on the office sign and the arena is packed. A band is playing and Evie has to make her way through the spectators to see the couples circling the gym with numbers pinned onto the back of their shirts and blouses. "And they were all haggard with exhaustion." Uncle Jake is running a dance marathon and enlists Evie to play the role of nurse. But, of course, she is a trained nurse and cannot simply pretend. Instead, she cares for the dancers, doing whatever she can to help them survive the inhumane conditions . . . and keep dancing.
From that point in the story, <em>Last Dance on the Starlight Pier<em> is an epic adventure about desperate measures in desperate times featuring a disparate group of supporting characters who come together and manage to become a family. It is a story about resilience and love. The dance troupe is comprised of the "horses" (the professionals who travel around the country participating in marathons because they draw crowds), as well as the down-on-their-luck locals who scrape together the entrance fee with dreams of outlasting the other contestants and claiming the much-needed prize money. Amateur, untrained dancers clung to the promise that if they could just keep moving long enough, enduring unimaginable conditions, rules, and unscrupulous judges, they could triumph. Bird compassionately illustrates the point by including several such couples in the book.
Evie is entranced by one of the horses, Zave -- the undisputed star of the marathons. He is as handsome as a movie matinee idol, debonair, and dances beautifully. (Of course, he was taught to dance by Evie's late father.) He expertly manipulates his audiences, convincing the swooning women to throw money on the dance floor during the "silver showers" portion of the marathons. When Zave needs medical attention, Evie is called upon to provide it in order to keep him dancing so the marathon will not have to shut down. Soon, Evie's dancing skills come to light and she becomes his partner. They fall in love and Evie dreams about what a future with Zave might be like. But he insists that he would never be a good husband to her and it isn't until his former partner, Cleo, gives Evie a glimpse of an aspect of Zave's life that he keeps hidden that Evie understands. Undaunted, her insistence upon pursuing a possible solution is misguided and nearly destroys her relationship with Zave.
Bird keeps the action moving at a steady pace as Evie and the other dancers navigate the rigors of the marathons with varying degrees of success. Evie is a sympathetic character -- a young woman who never gives up her dream of one day being a registered nurse working in a hospital, caring for her patients in the ways she could not care for or save her beloved father. She is gutsy, resourceful, and becomes fond and protective of her fellow dancers. She rushes to her grandmother's side when she learns that the older woman is suffering from dust pneumonia, a life-threatening disease caused by inhalation of the dust that blew through the plains, turning day into night and ravaging crops. Readers will cheer for Evie as she refuses to give up on herself or those she cares about, and refuses to be further manipulated and used by the despicable Mamie.
Bird convincingly takes readers along on Evie's journey as she learns about and becomes part of the marathon company, and injects intrigue into the story, as well, as the narrative races toward that July morning and the raging fire in the Starlight Palace. Situated at the end of the Starlight Pier in Galveston, Bird has constructed a clever storyline about graft and corruption centered around the Amadeo family's purported gala reopening of their biggest white elephant.
Bird completed her research and began writing the book during the early days of the pandemic, another dark time in U.S. history. The parallels between the two time periods -- both crises brought about, in significant part, by a failure of competent leadership -- were not lost on Bird, who says the lesson she took away from her mother's stories, her research, and the experience of writing the book during those terrifying and isolating days is that if people can come together during challenging times, there is nothing that can't be accomplished. She demonstrates that lesson through the delightfully eclectic and relatable cast of characters that populate Last Dance on the Starlight Pier. It is an engrossing and illuminating work of historical fiction exploring an overlooked aspect of American history.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
tamtasticbooks's review against another edition
I think in another time and place in my life, this book might be endearing and a fun read. Right now, though, I am having to DNF it. The first section, where our main character, Evie, is studying to become a nurse, was so interesting, and I wished we could have seen more of that story-her friendship with Sofie, the daughter of a pseudo-mobster, maybe?, her run-ins with the director who wanted to see her ousted because of her past, etc. All of that lasted a few chapters, and then we move on to the dance marathon circuit.
But not before an absolutely terrible flashback scene, where Evie's mom basically forces her CHILD to walk the runway at a strip show, complete with pervy guys going to town on themselves in front of kid Evie. I couldn't find content warnings for this book, so I was blindsided when this scene came around, and I was left with an awful taste in my mouth. After that, I had a hard time connecting to any character, and I found the story tedious (some scenes were fun-the first dance hall scene where Evie gets to show off her nursing skills was great.) I couldn't get over the dance marathon runners not cussing, though. There were lots of, "gee-dee"s (which was funny at first, and then a bit cringy) and then I landed on a, "fuggin'" and I couldn't take the book seriously anymore, even if that is how people talked during the Great Depression.
I may try this one out again on down the road, but my honest opinion as of right now is that this is a book with a lot of promise, and if you enjoy historical fiction and powering through some bits (like those mentioned prior), then you might give this one a try! It just wasn't my cup of tea.
Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the e-ARC.
But not before an absolutely terrible flashback scene, where Evie's mom basically forces her CHILD to walk the runway at a strip show, complete with pervy guys going to town on themselves in front of kid Evie. I couldn't find content warnings for this book, so I was blindsided when this scene came around, and I was left with an awful taste in my mouth. After that, I had a hard time connecting to any character, and I found the story tedious (some scenes were fun-the first dance hall scene where Evie gets to show off her nursing skills was great.) I couldn't get over the dance marathon runners not cussing, though. There were lots of, "gee-dee"s (which was funny at first, and then a bit cringy) and then I landed on a, "fuggin'" and I couldn't take the book seriously anymore, even if that is how people talked during the Great Depression.
I may try this one out again on down the road, but my honest opinion as of right now is that this is a book with a lot of promise, and if you enjoy historical fiction and powering through some bits (like those mentioned prior), then you might give this one a try! It just wasn't my cup of tea.
Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the e-ARC.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pedophilia
yetanothersusan's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
2.75
There was a lot I liked in this story but a lot I didn't like. Many of the characters were enjoyable and the scene, set in the Depression and the world of marathon dancing, was interesting. But, at the same time, I gnashed my teeth every time someone referred to homosexuality as a disease, something curable. Yes, I know some people felt that way and some still do. But to feel the joy associated with the idea of "curing" it was too much for me. That along with the horrible scene when Evie was 9 and in the burlesque show and the sappy ending all resulted in an uncomfortable less than satisfactory feeling at the end of the book.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of the book. This review is my own opinion.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of the book. This review is my own opinion.
alisonburnis's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
2.25
A wild romp through nursing school and vaudeville during the Depression, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier was unfortunately uneven. Following Evie Grace, a plucky young woman who dubbed her way into nursing school and out of her desperate life with her abusive mother, she ensures the bullying of the director of nursing for three years only to be denied her pin. Devastated, Evie ends up back in the world of vaudeville, working as a nurse for a travelling dance marathon show. Sucked into the world of the show, Evie begins a close friendship with Zave, one of the stars. A riotous, heartbreaking story is their plans for the future, and their quest to get Evie her pin.
The parts about nursing school felt focused but after that, the story grew chaotic and kind of nonsensical, as well as deeply homophobic. While Bird was representing the general feelings about same sex relationships during the time period, it doesn’t come across as well-executed. Evie wants to change Zave, who isn’t keen on changing who he is to be more palatable. Evie does eventually realize the medicine at the time was to recommend lobotomies, and thankfully, is horrified, but it was mostly very clunky as part of the plot and the finesse to illustrate queer love in a time where it was 100% not accepted was lacking.
I received this digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for my thoughts.
The parts about nursing school felt focused but after that, the story grew chaotic and kind of nonsensical, as well as deeply homophobic. While Bird was representing the general feelings about same sex relationships during the time period, it doesn’t come across as well-executed. Evie wants to change Zave, who isn’t keen on changing who he is to be more palatable. Evie does eventually realize the medicine at the time was to recommend lobotomies, and thankfully, is horrified, but it was mostly very clunky as part of the plot and the finesse to illustrate queer love in a time where it was 100% not accepted was lacking.
I received this digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for my thoughts.