The depression was a hard time for most people in the US. While the realities of life were obvious, people still found ways to entertain themselves. In this case, the dance marathons pitted couples against one another to win a cash prize. Looking back, you have to wonder how sane this idea was as some of these marathons lasted months. I can't even imagine being awake that long even with catnaps here and there. I don't know about historical accuracy, but this novel featured "hoofers" or employees in the marathons and typically won, keeping the money in the company or with the promoter. Reading these accounts made me appreciate what people did to ensure their livelihood. 

Evie Grace Devlin was no stranger to performing, but her dream was to be a nurse, and she thought she had succeeded when she was accepted into a nursing school in Galveston on a full scholarship. Who knew the head nun would have it out for her and yank that from under her at the last moment? This moment throws Evie back into the theater world via dance marathons as a nurse of sorts. This ragtag group became her family, and I learned a lot about how these marathons worked and to what extent they would help each other just make it through life. When you learn about Evie's life growing up and how her mother treated her, you won't lose any love for that woman. Mamie only cares about herself to the extent of torpedoing her daughter's life. 

Zave is a hoofer and has a connection to Evie that she discovers after a short period of time. They form a bond, and Evie thinks he could be her life's great love until she learns something about him. I won't spoil that secret, but it creates tension and issues between the two until they resolve the issue.

This story intrigued me, educated me, and gave me all the feels while reading about lives during the Great Depression. There are even political references since it was the same time that FDR ran against Hoover for President. I enjoyed the various settings, from Houston to Galveston to Litchfield to Chicago. Each represented what was happening in these different areas during the depression, and not all towns were alike.

We give this book 5 paws up.

I was interested in reading this book because I'm a little sick of reading all of the WWII fiction out there. While I did enjoy reading about the world of dance halls, I didn't feel like I connected with any of the characters. I still enjoyed the book, however!

4-4.5 stars

Evie Grace Devlin has seen her share of hard times, like so many other Americans during the Great Depression. Her life takes her from the Vaudeville circuit as a child performer to school, and back again.

The story was gripping and the characters drew me in to the story. Each character was well done and I didn’t feel that they detracted from the ultimate story. I’d definitely read it again and have already recommended it to others.

DNF

I had a really hard time staying interested in this story. I LOVE historical fiction and I know they can sometimes be slow to start in order to relay necessary background to the reader, but after 82pgs there was no picking up the pace for me.

I did not connect to the characters at all, did not find myself really caring where the story went. I was just….bored. Every time I picked it up it was feeling like a chore and I had no desire to continue reading to find out where the story was going to go. I also found the scene when Evie was young and had to go on stage in skimpy clothes disturbing and I don’t want to read scenes like that.

Thank you to St Martins Press, Sarah Bird, and NetGalley for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

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.

I really enjoy books and movies set in the 1920s so naturally I had to snag this book! While I did enjoy the book and writing I felt like the characters could have been fleshed out more. The end seemed a bit rushed trying to tie up loose ends. Overall enjoyable and I will be looking for more by Sarah Bird.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

The 1920s are currently the time period that fascinates me the most right now and I’ve snatched up every historical novel I find that is written about those years. This book exposed me to an aspect of those years I hadn’t known about before - dance marathons. So fascinating! There is a lot about the 20s jam-packed in here - the Depression, the mob, medical treatments and more. I actually kind of think there was too much crammed into one story; I had a hard time focusing on what was supposed to matter. So, I love that this showcased a piece of pop culture I never knew about but ultimately, this was not my favorite historical novel.

One of those rare books where the prologue shapes the reader's entire experience through to the final page.

Starting in gaudy, glammed-up Galveston in the years immediately 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, as her early life fleshes 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, who 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 deceptively simple, 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.

Very highly recommended.
'

It was refreshing to read historical fiction set during a different era than WWII. This story of dance marathons and student nurses during the depression was interesting and the writing sucked me in but I wish we had learned more about the characters lives. They all fell a bit flat for me. That being said, it was an enjoyable read about a unique period of time.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the copy to review.

LAST DANCE ON THE STARLIGHT PIER

Depression Era story about Evie Grace Devlin, daughter of a vaudeville family, who strives to improve her life through training to become a Registered Nurse. Set mainly in Galveston and Chicago, her plans are interrupted and she finds herself back in the spotlight as she joins up with a dance marathon troupe.

This book involves many personal, sexual, and family issues. Also touched upon are medical and political topics, poverty, desperation, organized crime, and the importance of belonging.

I enjoyed the historical information, especially the details of the rough existence as a marathon dancer and the backstage machinations of show business. I felt that some of the more complex and heavier topics were presented a little too casually and left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. I admired Evie’s growth and development throughout the story, although the road was a little rough.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Sarah Bird, and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book is set during the depression and features Evie, a young woman who started life as a dancer, following in her parents’ footsteps. She sets her sights on getting a nursing degree to escape her life! Mostly her Mother
. She’s working on a three-year nursing program She goes through really tough times but proves she is such a resilient woman!
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the early copy to read and review.

It was good! I've been fascinated by the phenomenon of dance marathons for years and to find it featured in a historical fiction novel made me pick this one up instantly. I got so much more than I expected! Evie is an amazing protagonist. She's fierce and broken, I connected with her right from the get-go and I don't think I've hated a character as much as Mamie in a long time. There's really a great cast in this book and I'd say Cleo was the most intriguing to me even if Evie was my favorite in the end.

This novel covers such a breadth of the American experience in the late Prohibition / early Depression era. At times the book seemed a bit wordy, too far from Evie's personal moments, but it never was so slow that I put it down. If anything, I *tore* through it considering how chunky it is. I just think it could've been a little tighter editing-wise.

To be honest, I'm not completely sold on the ending. It was unexpected, not in a bad way but just in a wraps-up-too-well kinda way. That said, I think I'm alone in that opinion which is totally fine. As I say in all my reviews, one person's thoughts shouldn't dissuade you from picking up a book that looks good to you.

All in all, I really enjoyed this story and Evie's journey. I'd definitely recommend it to other historical fiction fans, especially if you haven't read much in this era of America.

Note: I received a free electronic edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank them, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to do so.

The location and cover of Last Dance on the Starlight Pier initially drew me into the story. The world of dance marathons was not something I was familiar with, so I was intrigued.

The Great Depression-era story centers around Evie, a young dancer who is pushed to follow in her family’s Vaudeville Circuit footsteps. To escape her grueling life, Evie accepts a scholarship to a three-year nursing program in Galveston. She finds herself back in the dancing world, this time with a promoter of dance marathons. She meets a cast of colorful characters along the way, including the incomparable Zave.

I enjoyed this different take on the Great Depression, and enjoyed the well-crafter characters. This was an enjoyable read.

Thank you to Sarah Bird, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this novel.

After the initial pages, I found myself not connecting with the story or characters, so I decided to pass on this book. Did not finish

In LAST DANCE ON THE STARLIGHT PIER, Sarah Bird immerses the reader in the world of dance marathons during the Great Depression, something I knew nothing about. Evie Grace Devlin tried to reinvent herself and start over with a nursing career, hoping to put her past behind her and do something positive. When the secrets of her past come back to haunt her, it seems her dream of the future is gone. Trying to make a new future, she finds a job with the dance marathons, finding family and falling in love with one of the dancers, who has his own secrets. When their path brings them back to Galveston, will Evie find triumph or tragedy?
The Great Depression is a period I still haven’t read much about, and the dance marathons were something new for me. It was interesting to read about them, and to learn more about how Galveston rose during the same time. It was a fascinating look. The research and writing of the novel kept me enthralled from beginning to end.
Thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read and advanced copy. All opinions are my own and freely given.
#LastDanceontheStarlightPier #SarahBird #StMartinsPress

Hmmmm.... how do I feel about Last Dance on the Starlight Pier? I can't really decide.

I enjoyed Evie's story within the framework of the Great Depression. I also enjoyed Evie's story that takes place in the Dance Hall. I actually thought that one was really fun. But I didn't feel that these two parts of the story meshed well together. One was sad, a bit depressing if I'm honest, and focused on family drama. The other side was chaotic, whimsical and I could see this being a fun, 1930's campy style TV series.

So, yes, I liked both sides of the story but just not together. It just felt too disjointed.

Fans of Big Bands or Dance Hall times should definitely check this one out.

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird is a sweeping story that takes place during the Great Depression. It does a deep dive into the interesting worlds of dance marathons, growing up in show business, and the darker side of Galveston, Texas.

Evie the main character a young woman who started life as a dancer, pushed into following in her parents’ footsteps in the Vaudeville Circuit. When she gets older and can escape her sinister mother, she gets the idea to become a nurse in order to escape the life she has endured. She is accepted on a scholarship to the three-year nursing program in Galveston.

Her horrible upbringing comes back to haunt her and she’s forced back into the dancing world, this time with a promoter of dance marathons. She meets some very colorful people while in the marathon world, including the star dancer Zave. The marathons offer solid work, but it is grueling work.

The Great Depression was a desperate time for many. Overall I found this story memorable due to the very well developed characters.

Even though there is a lot of sad stuff happening in this historical novel, it is a different view of this time of history than I was previously familiar with, and I thought it was a thought provoking read.

I would like to thank the author, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I found the main character, Evie got one nerves with her decisions. I did enjoy the setting of the novel both in time period and location.

I enjoyed this. It was an interesting look into the Depression era - including Vaudeville shows, dance marathons, etc. I was invested in the characters and wanted to find out what was going to happen. Though at times, I really didn't like the choices they made.

Overall, a good book that kept me reading.

This novel was just ok for me. I think I was expecting more KH-ish characters. Somw of the characters were way too awful for my taste. I did like Evie though and was rooting for her throughout the book.

Thank you, NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.