Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

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.