Last Dance on the Starlight Pier
One of those rare books where the prologue shapes the reader's entire experience through to the final page.
Set largely in gaudy, glammed-up Galveston in the years following the great crash of 1929, the tale bounces between the shocking 1932 prologue and the summer of ‘29 when Evie Grace’s life first takes a turn away from vaudeville and deep poverty toward nursing school and respectability.
From there we follow her winding path forward and backward in time, up and down the social scale, from luxury hotel suites to dusty homeless camps. Flashbacks from her early life flesh out her current situation and preoccupations, and her brushes with the mobsters who run America's lucrative Prohibition-era liquor trade compete for sheer nail-biting tension with repeat encounters with her mother, Mamie, whose high-drama selfishness makes Joan Crawford look more like Mary Poppins than Mommy Dearest.
This book is a much bigger, more absorbing story than I was expecting, with ever-deepening knowledge of the Depression's economy, society, and politics as well as a blistering condemnation of the treatment of women in general and of anyone suspected of 'sexual deviancy' which had an elastic definition that could be stretched to fit almost any situation and used to bludgeon anyone with less power.
The writing is sound, the Depression backdrop is laid in with sure and convincing strokes, and tough-as-nails Evie is easy to root for. So easy, in fact, I stayed up well past bedtime to follow her unfolding journey, rooting for her to find acceptance and happiness and the family life she yearns for.
Highly Recommended for anyone with an interest in American history, women's history, and love that doesn't fit the mainstream mold.
No comments:
Post a Comment