The Last Train to Key West BOOK REVIEW

• Date Published:
  2020
• Length:
  320 pages—Listening Time: 9 hours 16 minutes
• Genre:
  Historical Fiction, Romance
• Setting:
  Labor Day weekend, 1935; Key West and Islamorada in the Florida Keys
• Awards
  New York Times Best Seller 2020; USA Today Bestseller 2020
• Languages:
  English
• Sensitive Aspects:
  Domestic abuse, pregnancy in a dangerous/abusive environment, arranged marriage and loss of female autonomy, graphic depictions of hurricane destruction and mass death, detailed descriptions of injured and dying hurricane victims, exploitation and mistreatment of World War I veterans used as forced/low-wage labor, organized crime and mob violence, murder, political persecution and instability (Cuban Revolution of 1933), effects of the Great Depression and extreme poverty
• Movie
  As of June 2026, there are no movie or television adaptations of The Last Train to Key West.
• Recommended for Book Club:
  Yes

Let me ask you something: how many times have you picked up a novel thinking it was just going to be a good story, and then found yourself sitting there, jaw slightly dropped, Googling things at midnight because you can't believe what you're reading actually happened?

That was me with The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton.

I had absolutely no idea the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 ever happened. None. Zero. I consider myself a reasonably well-read person, and somehow this catastrophic storm—one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States—had completely slipped past me. And the veterans. Oh, the veterans. World War I soldiers who had served their country, come home broken, and were essentially abandoned in work camps in the Florida Keys, forgotten by the very government they'd bled for. I didn't know that either. Reading about how those men were treated — or rather, how they were not treated — made my chest tight in a way that took me by surprise.

And then the storm hit on the page, and everything got personal.

My husband grew up in New Orleans. He's a hurricane veteran in his own right—the kind of man who boards up windows with the calm of someone making a grocery list. But for me? Hurricanes Irma and then Maria were my introduction to that particular brand of terror. I was not prepared. And several times while reading this book, those memories came crawling back—the eerie stillness before impact, the helplessness, and the devastation that lingers long after the winds stop. Cleeton writes storm sequences with a visceral tension that doesn't let you look away.

Now, I'll give you the full picture because that's what you deserve: the characters could've used a bit more depth. A few of them felt like they were on the edge of being fully realized without quite getting there. But the plot architecture was masterful. The way Cleeton weaves three women's stories together against the backdrop of this forgotten historical tragedy is genuinely impressive. She makes you need to know what happens next.

So yes. Read this book.

The Last Train to Key West is a historical fiction novel set over Labor Day weekend in 1935, against the backdrop of one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history—the Labor Day Hurricane, a Category 5 storm that tore through the Florida Keys and killed hundreds of people.

The story follows three women whose lives intersect in Key West, each arriving on the island with her own set of desperate circumstances, secrets, and survival instincts.

Helen Berner is a Key West native and waitress who was born on the island but dreams of escaping it. Nine months pregnant and trapped in a deeply unhappy — and dangerous — marriage to a fisherman named Tom, Helen's days are a cycle of endurance. When a World War I veteran becomes a regular at her café, her world quietly begins to shift.

Mirta Pérez arrives in Key West on her honeymoon. She's a young Cuban woman from a once-powerful, wealthy family that fell out of political favor after Cuba's 1933 revolution left them vulnerable and exposed. To secure her family's safety, Mirta agreed to an arranged marriage with an American stranger—a man with a sophisticated exterior and some very complicated business dealings underneath it. She's navigating a new country, a new language, and a husband she's only just beginning to know.

Elizabeth Preston is a young New York woman of formerly high social standing whose family lost everything in the Wall Street crash. She's made her way down to the Keys on what can only be described as a mission—searching for someone she loves, her brother, among the camps of World War I veterans laboring in brutal conditions on the railroad project at Lower Matecumbe Key. Along the way, she crosses paths with an FBI agent who is on a search of his own.

The novel is steeped in the atmosphere of Depression-era America—economic desperation, political instability, and a palpable undercurrent of danger. The WWI veterans working the railroad camps are a central thread in the story, men who served their country and came home to poverty, neglect, and hard labor in the sweltering Florida Keys heat. Their presence provides the novel much of its historical weight.

The three women's paths cross briefly but meaningfully at a Key West diner before fate—and the approaching storm—pulls them all toward the same terrifying destination: Lower Matecumbe Key, directly in the hurricane's path.

The Labor Day Hurricane serves as the novel's dramatic centerpiece. As the holiday weekend unfolds and the storm gathers strength off the coast, every personal crisis, romantic tension, and dangerous secret in the story gets compressed into one catastrophic collision of weather and human drama. The hurricane doesn't just destroy structures — it strips away pretense and forces every character to reveal who they truly are.

I know your to-be-read pile is already threatening to topple off the nightstand. I know you've been burned before by historical fiction that promised depth and delivered melodrama. So let me give you the real reasons The Last Train to Key West deserves a spot at the top of that pile—and why you'll thank yourself for putting it there.

You'll learn history that somehow never made it into your textbooks.

The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the United States, and most of us have never even heard of it. I hadn't. Cleeton doesn't just use it as a backdrop—she makes you feel the weight of it. You'll finish this book genuinely better informed about a forgotten chapter of American history.

The treatment of WWI veterans will make your blood boil

These were men, our grandfathers, who came home from war with nothing but their trauma, shuffled off to brutal labor camps in the Florida Keys while the country moved on without them. Cleeton shines a light on this injustice quietly but powerfully, and it lingers with you long after the last page.

Three women. Three completely different lives. One story that holds them all together

If you love character-driven narratives where wildly different people find themselves pulled toward the same moment, this book delivers exactly that. Helen, Mirta, and Elizabeth each carry their own world on their shoulders, and watching those worlds collide is genuinely compelling storytelling.

It captures what it feels like to be a woman with no good options — and choose anyway

Every single one of these women is navigating a situation where the deck is stacked against her. A dangerous marriage. An arranged union with a stranger. A desperate search in a strange place. And every single one of them finds a way to act, to push forward, to refuse to simply disappear. That's the kind of female protagonist energy that never gets old.

The pacing will keep you up past your bedtime

Cleeton constructs the plot like a pressure cooker—she keeps turning up the heat, slowly and deliberately, until everything is about to burst. As Labor Day weekend ticks closer, you'll find yourself reading just one more chapter at 11pm. Then midnight. Don't say I didn't warn you.

If you've ever been through a hurricane, this book will hit differently

There's something about reading a fictional storm when you've lived through a real one. The details feel too familiar — the eerie calm, the dread, the helplessness. Cleeton writes it with a visceral honesty that will resonate deeply if you've ever sat in a dark house listening to wind you couldn't control.

It's the kind of book that makes you want to talk about it

This is prime book club material. The historical context alone generates conversation, but add in the moral complexities these women face, the questions about loyalty and survival and love, and you've got a discussion that could easily fill an entire evening. Pour the wine early.

Here are 8 books to read if you liked The Last Train to Key West.

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton
If The Last Train to Key West was your first taste of Cleeton, start here. This is the novel that launched her Pérez family series, following a Cuban-American woman who travels to Havana to scatter her grandmother's ashes—and uncovers a long-buried love story rooted in the Cuban Revolution. Lush, romantic, and politically charged.

When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton
The second book in the Pérez family series picks up with Beatriz Pérez, one of the most fiercely compelling heroines Cleeton has ever written. Set against the Bay of Pigs and Cold War tensions, this is a story about a woman who refuses to accept defeat—and gets tangled up with a U.S. senator and the CIA along the way.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Set during both World War I and its aftermath, this novel follows two women—a female spy and a young American searching for her missing cousin—whose stories converge in postwar France. Quinn writes with the same multi-timeline, multi-heroine structure that makes Cleeton so addictive, and the history hits just as hard.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn
Quinn does it again with this gripping WWII-era thriller about a trio of characters hunting a female Nazi war criminal across postwar Europe and Boston. It's tense, atmospheric, and built around women who operate in a world that underestimates them at every turn—sound familiar?

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
Based on the true story of a young Italian man who guided Jewish refugees over the Alps during WWII, this novel delivers the same gut-punch of forgotten history that makes The Last Train to Key West so powerful. It reads like fiction but sits with you like fact.

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
A young Jewish woman in WWII France forges documents to help refugees escape Nazi-occupied territory — and encodes a secret record of every name she saves into a stolen book. It's meticulous, emotional, and carries the same weight of wartime injustice that threads through Cleeton's work.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
If the Depression-era atmosphere of The Last Train to Key West gripped you, The Four Winds will wreck you in the best possible way. Set during the Dust Bowl, it follows a Texas mother who uproots her family for California, only to face a different kind of devastation. Hannah writes poverty and resilience with devastating precision.

The Women by Kristin Hannah
One of Hannah's most recent epics follows a young woman who enlists as an army nurse during Vietnam—a war history largely erased women from. Like Cleeton, Hannah uses forgotten female perspectives to reframe history you thought you already understood. It's an emotional powerhouse from start to finish.

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