In THE LAST TRAIN TO KEY WEST, Chanel Cleeton revisits the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, one of the strongest storms to hit the United States. The lives of three women, all of whom are unknown to each other at the start of the novel, will become connected through chance encounters.
 
Key West native Helen Berner, who is pregnant after many miscarriages, is in a very unhappy marriage. At the age of 16 she married Tom, an often-drunk fisherman and an abusive bully who may be involved in some shady business. He disappears for days and weeks, and during this time, Helen works as a waitress at Ruby’s Café. A mysterious man comes into the restaurant on weekends and sits at her table, ordering key lime pie, but he doesn’t talk to her. Ruby teases her about it, but when he saves Helen from some thugs who want to rob her, she realizes that there may be more to him than she had imagined.

"The story, the characters, the setting and the situation all lead to a thrilling climax. Cleeton does a magnificent job describing the fury of the hurricane, right down to the stinging sand moving at such a velocity that it causes bleeding on the skin."

Cuban-born Mirta Perez recently wed Anthony Cordero, a wealthy gangster from New York. Her father had backed the wrong politician, and for years his business suffered greatly. When Anthony decides that he wants to marry Mirta, her father believes that her sacrifice will save their family from a precarious financial situation. We meet the couple when they stop at Ruby’s to eat. Mirta is elegant and determined to succeed in her marriage, and it seems that she will do whatever it takes to be a partner to her husband.
 
New Yorker Elizabeth Preston is from a wealthy family, but her father’s investment firm made some unwise decisions and began to lose money. The final blow was the Great Depression, and now her family has nothing. She is engaged, but we don’t know to whom. We do know that she is on a train and is heading to Key West to find someone. A beautiful woman who loves to flirt and live dangerously, Elizabeth meets a government agent who agrees to help in her search. She ends up at Ruby’s for coffee but can’t afford any food. Sensing that she is hungry, Helen gives her some pie and tells her where she can stay safely on her journey --- with Helen’s aunt, who owns an inn on Upper Matecumbe Key in the town of Islamorada.
 
We also are introduced to wretched government camps that housed veterans from World War I. After the war, those who had been promised bonus payments in the future assembled at the White House to demand that they be given their money immediately. Although they had served their country honorably, there were no jobs available because of the Depression. The government’s response was to offer them the opportunity to work on the highway being built in the Florida Keys. They were housed on Windley and Matecumbe Keys, and more than a third of them were killed in the hurricane that tore through the islands. They were not evacuated in time, and Cleeton shares the many reasons why this tragedy occurred.

Helen, Mirta and Elizabeth come from very different places and cultures, but they are essentially searching for the same thing. Each woman wants love, security and something worthwhile in her life. While Mirta and Elizabeth share a background of having known wealth, Mirta married at the behest of her father in order to save her family. Elizabeth has no one she can rely on, and must find a way to support both herself and her mother. Helen, on the other hand, only wants a safe place for her baby --- one where she won’t have to worry that her abusive, violent husband will begin hurting their child.

The story, the characters, the setting and the situation all lead to a thrilling climax. Cleeton does a magnificent job describing the fury of the hurricane, right down to the stinging sand moving at such a velocity that it causes bleeding on the skin. Roofs ripped from houses, whole buildings flung around like paper, railroad cars tossed in the water --- it’s all so vivid as we feel like we’re experiencing the storm firsthand. We can see, taste and smell the salt air on the beach, as well as the stagnant rotting in the veterans’ camps. We see the beauty of the Keys, the worst side of nature, and the fortitude of women who must stand up for themselves.
 
Fans of Cleeton’s previous novels, WHEN WE LEFT CUBA and NEXT YEAR IN HAVANA (a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick), will enjoy and appreciate THE LAST TRAIN TO KEY WEST.