In 1919, the U.S. ratified the 18th amendment. The normally mild-mannered Frank Turner, who has “got his temper all twisted up about Prohibition,” marks the occasion by smashing his hand up in a drunken brawl, rendering him unable to work. This uncharacteristic moment of violence spells disaster for his family, who is barely getting by as it is.

Matriarch Ethel springs into action. A woman who “always had her nose to the wind, sniffing out ways to improve our station in life,” she sees an opportunity in the crisis. Though her four daughters --- 13-year-old Kit, 17-year-old Winnie, 18-year-old Gert, and Nell, a 22-year-old widow with an infant on her hip --- are united in their indifference to the theatrical life, their ambitious would-be stage mother will brook no opposition. The girls are to become The Tumbling Turner Sisters and make their living on the vaudeville circuit.

"Juliette Fay’s charming fourth novel is inspired in part by her own family’s history in vaudeville, and she dives into the era’s rich history with unbridled enthusiasm."

Juliette Fay’s charming fourth novel is inspired in part by her own family’s history in vaudeville, and she dives into the era’s rich history with unbridled enthusiasm. The book is peppered with evocative details --- the sisters dread the prospect of being assigned the “chaser” slot on the bill (the unfortunate act charged with chasing people out of the theater), eat 15-cent cheese sandwiches, smear on greasepaint, and fight unscrupulous theater owners who try to short them on pay.

As the girls learn their way around the vaudeville stage, they find themselves pushing boundaries both personal and political. From the scandalously short costumes the sisters wear to the fight over women’s suffrage, THE TUMBLING TURNER SISTERS captures an America on the verge of great social change. Though each sister at first resists performing, they soon start to see life on the stage as a means of escape, both from their domineering mother and from the limited expectations the world has of them. “We all wanted our version of freedom, every last one of us,” Gert says.

Told from the alternating perspectives of quirky, studious Winnie and brash, beautiful Gert, the book buzzes along as speedily as the vaudeville revues Fay delights in describing. (The comedy routines are borrowed from actual sketches performed at the time.) With each engagement lasting no more than a week or so, there’s plenty of opportunity for the Turners to meet colorful supporting characters and get themselves into scrapes. A few of these interludes are as pat as a worn-out stage routine. Can any modern reader doubt that obsequious fellow performer Sissy Salloway is not what she seems, or that Gert’s flirtation with an African-American tap dancer will end in anything less than disaster?

Still, following along as the fierce, feisty Turner girls come into their own is a joy. Smart, awkward Winnie secretly has her heart set on college and hopes to perhaps become a nurse. Initially, having to leave school to perform annoys her, but she begins to hope that vaudeville might provide an alternate path to achieving the independence she craves. The lively Gert immediately takes a shine to performing; she sees life as an itinerant acrobat as an escape from the strictures of home and boredom of small-town life. “[T]he greater the risks, the more alive I felt,” she muses, and she’s not just speaking of her on-stage tumbling tricks.

Each girl, along with their two sisters, and even their prickly, grasping mother, eventually gets what she longs for, though not necessarily in the way she expected, and not without some heartbreak along the way. While most of the novel is light and humorous, things take a dark turn in the third act, when the real world abruptly intrudes on a world of costumes and stage lights. Theater might be a way to escape from your life for a time, Fay suggests, but you won’t be able to outrun reality forever. And when difficulty arises, it is family who will catch you when you fall --- in the case of the Turners, quite literally.