Review: The Last Train to Key West

The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Last Train to Key West differs from Chanel Cleeton's previous outings with the Perez family. Cleeton's backdrop for this novel is the devastating hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys on Labor Day, 1935. This novel, set far earlier than those in her Cuban duology (Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba) involves Mirta Perez (yes, a Perez, Beatriz and Elisa's aunt, who has married the improper American) who has married Anthony Cordero, a man she barely knows, to help her Cuban family after Batista's coup in 1934 has nearly bankrupted the Perez family; Helen Berner, a waitress at the Ruby's Cafe, the place with the best key lime pie in Key West; and Elizabeth Preston (yes, a Preston!), a young woman whose family is reeling from the stock market crash and perhaps something more, who is looking for a lost family member in the veteran camps in the Keys. A series of events bring these three women to Key West just as one of the worst Category 5 storms ever to form in the Atlantic bears down on the islands. Each of these women has a distinct story to tell and their connections to one another are revealed over the course of the novel.

Cleeton weaves the story of these three women together skillfully, holding your interest as the intensity of their stories steadily increases as the ominous storm approaches. As someone who spent much of my life in South Florida, the fame of the Labor Day hurricane that hit the Keys is etched in Florida history. It is still considered to be the strongest hurricane on record to have hit the United States. In some respects, the storm itself is like a presence in the book.

The audiobook is narrated by Kyla Garcia (familiar from the Cuban duology) as Mirta, Rachel L. Jacobs as Elizabeth, and Karissa Vacker as Helen.

The Reader Guide for the novel (for audiobook listeners, since the guide is part of the print edition of the novel) can be found here.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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