Last Dance on the Starlight Pier: A Novel

by Sarah Bird

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250265548
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

SARAH BIRD was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award, she was selected for the Meryl Streep Screenwriting Lab, the B&N Discover Great Writers program, NPR's Moth Radio series, the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and New York Libraries Books to Remember. Her previous novel, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, is based on the true story of the only woman to serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

Editorial Reviews

02/21/2022

Bird’s immersive latest (after Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen) dives into the gritty world of the Depression-era dance marathon craze. In 1932, all 21-year-old Evie Grace Devlin wants is to become a registered nurse. But she’s denied graduation and the coveted RN pin from a Catholic nursing school in Galveston, Tex., after revelations surface about her past as a vaudeville performer. While in Houston visiting her mother, Evie stops in to watch a marathon competition that pits locals against professional dancers. There, she treats the sprained ankle of star pro dancer Zave Cassidy, and when the promoter sees Evie dance, he pairs her with Zave, to the delight of the audience. Evie stays with the show because she needs the money and time to figure out how to get her nursing pin. Plus she and Zave have fallen in love. His reluctance to get married stems from his conviction that, despite his best intentions, he’ll make a poor husband. A disaster during a dance forces Evie to reevaluate her plans and to confront the inadequacies of modern medicine. The author brings her spunky heroine to vivid life amid the atmospheric setting. Bird’s finely crafted novel is sure to delight. Agent: Kristine Dahl, ICM Partners. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Texas Observer's Best Texas Books of 2022
An Austin Chronicle's Best of the Year

"Poignant." - Houston Chronicle

"Texas author Sarah Bird constructs curious dreamscapes." - Austin American Stateman

"Bird is a master at crafting narrative voices." - Booklist

"Sarah Bird ruthlessly strips away the shallow glamour of marathon dancing, exposing cynical, cash-driven machinations founded on desperate poverty and run by chiselers. [...] Yet, in the people who inhabit the dance floor, Bird creates a cast of fully realized, compassionate human beings." - The Dallas Morning News

"Blending the enthralling world of dance marathons during the Great Depression, with characters based on famous and Galvestonian from the 1930s, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by award-winning author Sarah Bird might just become one of the most popular beach-reads of 2022." - Galveston Monthly Magazine

"Inspiring and hopeful, the latest from 2014 Texas Writer Award recipient and Texas Literary Hall of Fame inductee Sarah Bird is a must-read." - Tribeza

"Last Dance on the Starlite Pier brings to raucous life the dance marathons of the Great Depression, a lowdown world of strivers, grifters, innocents, and gangsters all trying to survive the hardest of hardscrabble times. These pages brim with primal energy, the story propelled by life-or-death stakes and the most vivid cast of characters you could ever hope to meet. Sarah Bird has given us a barnburner—or should I say pier burner?—of a novel that satisfies on every level." —Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and National Book Critics' Circle Award Winner

"I was swept away by this nuanced portrait....Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a reminder of our resilience." —Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestseller of The Paris Library

"Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is like a rediscovered movie from the 1930s, starring a colorful cast of indelible characters from the indomitable heroine Evie Grace Drake to the low-rent showbiz types grabbing for the brass ring and the menacing wise guys who controlled the real-life Boardwalk Empire of Galveston, Texas in 1932. It’s a poignant, beautifully written story of troubled times and troubled hearts.” —Alan Brennert, bestselling author of Daughter of Moloka’i and Moloka’i

"An engaging and moving story of second chances and told with care and compassion. So relevant to our times and yet wholly and skillfully transportive to the world of yesteryear. Well done!" —Susan Meissner, author of The Nature of Fragile Things

"I loved this gorgeous and deeply compassionate novel! Take a front row seat to the astonishing world of Depression-era dance marathons—-where the poor and the struggling could distract themselves from their troubles, and where former vaudevillians could keep being paid. Sarah Bird brings the 1930s to vivid, technicolor life, and Bird's characters—especially aspiring nurse Evie Grace—will dance away with your heart." -Stacy Swann, author Olympus,Texas (Good Morning America Pick)

"Last Dance on the Starlight Pier tells a deeply touching story in which down and out Evie sees truth triumphs, right is restored, and evil vanquished—a story that also is, in part, about the tragic consequences of failed leadership. A story resonant with our own time. Sarah Bird well represents what marathons were as performance, the type of people who promoted and danced in them and the atmosphere of an era that continues to play out in the 21st century." —Carol Martin, author of Dance Marathons: Performing American culture of the 1920s and 1930s and Theatre of the Real.

From the Publisher

11/01/2021

From Barenbaum, author of Barnes & Noble Discover pick A Bend in the Stars, Atomic Anna features a renowned nuclear scientist who is sleeping as Chernobyl melts down in 1986 and rips through time to meet her estranged daughter Molly in 1992, shot in the chest and begging her to go back and change the past (50,000-copy first printing). In Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, Evie Grace Devlin tries to leave vaudeville behind to become a nurse in 1930s Galveston, TX, but encounters setbacks and instead gets caught up in the shady world of dance marathons; following the Dublin International Literary Award long-listed Above the East China Sea (75,000-copy first printing). In Spur Award-winning Dallas's 1918 Denver-set Little Souls, sisters Helen and Lutie care for the daughter of a flu victim, and an abusive man's murder is covered up by leaving his body on the streets with all the other corpses to be collected (30,000-copy first printing). PEN/Robert W. Bingham finalist Llanos-Figueroa explores 19th-century Puerto Rican plantation society through Pola, A Woman of Endurance, captured in Africa and brought to Puerto Rico to bear babies subsequently taken from her and enslaved (40,000-copy first printing). First in a tetralogy, Scurati's internationally best-selling, Strega Award-winning M.—short for Mussolini—explores the rise of fascism in Italy (40,000-copy first printing). In The Good Left Undone, the New York Times best-selling Trigiana returns to Italy, where Matelda, the dying matriarch of a Tuscan artisan family, reveals her mother's love of the Scottish sea captain that fathered Matelda during World War II.

Library Journal

09/01/2022

Bird's (Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen) latest, superbly narrated by Cassandra Campbell, is set in 1930s Galveston, TX, amid the Great Depression. Attempting to get away from her mother and bury her sordid past as a vaudeville performer, Evie Devlin applies to nursing school. At graduation, she is unfairly denied her RN pin, so she returns to the entertainment world and uses her nursing skills to tend to injured marathon dancers. There, she meets handsome Zave, whom she pairs with during a dance marathon to raise money for the faltering troupe. Evie and Zave fall in fall in love, and it is then that Evie learns his dark secret. The two head to Galveston, looking for happiness, but find disaster. With a cast of colorful characters, Campbell fleshes all vocally with aplomb, allowing listeners to hear how Evie's naïveté disappears as she becomes worldly-wise and how Zave gains his long-sought self-confidence. The pacing is on target, especially during the fire at the Starlight Palace. VERDICT This gripping audio about dance marathons will have listeners wanting more.—Stephanie Bange

Library Journal - Audio