By Hayley Platt
The Last Train to Key West, published in June 2020, is a historical fiction novel set in 1935 in the Florida Keys when one of the most powerful hurricanes recorded passed through the area.
Helen Berner lives in the Keys with an abusive husband and is nine months pregnant when the hurricane heads into town. Mirta Perez is brought to the Keys on her honeymoon with her new husband before they head to New York City permanently. Elizabeth Preston travelled to the Keys from New York and is hoping to find a missing family member who is likely in the camps where many veterans of the Great War are living. The book is set during the Great Depression, and even though that is not the focus of the storyline, readers can see how it has impacted each of the characters and how they deal with conflict.
The book is told from all three of their perspectives, but it is easy to keep each storyline straight as the author has mastered writing each of their perspectives in its own way.
Cleeton has woven the stories of Mirta, Elizabeth, and Helen seamlessly as they prepare for and live through the hurricane. She has shown the strength and determination women of the time had, having lived through the war and the beginning of the Depression before encountering this extreme weather. All three women start off in Key West but travel separately to the town of Islamorada, where they weather the storm, each in their own way. At the end of the book, readers are left feeling satisfied with no major plot holes. It is clear how each storyline has come to a neat conclusion.
The Floridian landscape has a unique feeling, and the descriptions of the setting easily transport readers into the page alongside Cleeton’s heroines. As the storm rolls in, it is impossible to miss the darkness and worry within the pages.
In addition to the primary tale of surviving the hurricane, each perspective pulls in details about secondary storylines and history that may not be expected in historical fiction surrounding a specific event. Examples of this would be the lives of some army men following the war in the work camps which can be found in Elizabeth’s chapters. Helen’s chapters include fishermen at the time and the struggles women encountered in abusive relationships in the 1930s. Mirta’s chapters brought in background information about the Cuban Revolution in 1933. All of these topics added to the story paint a detailed picture of the lives of each of the women.
In addition to the spectacular writing, the cover design was developed using an image of a model from the cover of an issue of Vogue in 1952 superimposed onto an image of Key West.
This book is recommended to historical fiction lovers, especially those looking for stories set in the USA during the Great Depression.