The Tumbling Turner Sisters

April 11, 2016
In Fay’s latest novel, four sisters take to the road in pursuit of vaudeville fame and fortune, but soon find the journey bringing them closer to each other and their own personal desires than it does to riches and celebrity. When their father suffers an injury that leaves his dominant hand useless, Nell, Gert, Winnie, and Kit give in to their mother’s hopes of developing a tumbling act that will help them make a name for themselves in vaudeville and save the family from eviction. Once on the road, the young women find love and strength in the eye-opening world outside Johnson City, N.Y. But just as the Tumbling Turners are reaching their peak, tragedy strikes and forces the family to reassess their dreams. All four Turner daughters and their mother are forces to be reckoned with; these women are keen to shake off the restrictions of their times, and they do so with relish when the opportunity comes about through performing. Their lively personalities bring to life Fay’s outlandishly enjoyable premise. With humor, affection, ambition, and a talent for weaving in history, Fay brings the world of 1910s vaudeville vividly to life through the travails of the tenacious Turner family.

June 1, 2016

In 1919, when their boot-stitcher father damages his hand and cannot work to support the family, the four Turner sisters decide to make it big in vaudeville. Spurred on by their mother, the young women develop an acrobatic act and dub themselves the Tumbling Turner Sisters. Their story is narrated in alternating chapters by middle sisters Gert and Winnie, although their voices are indistinct. Studious Winnie dreams of college, practices her first aid skills on the road, and finds romance with Joe, a young piano player from Boston. Gert, the most outgoing of the siblings, has always been popular with the boys but she puts herself in danger when she befriends an African American tap dancer. VERDICT Readers will applaud these hardworking sisters. Fay's (Shelter Me) charming fourth novel pulls back the curtains to reveal the colorful lives in vaudeville.--Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
When their father loses his job as the result of a crippling industrial accident, the Turner sistersKit, Winnie, Gert, and the recently widowed Nellhave to do something, and something big, to keep the family housed and fed. It's 1919, and there aren't a lot of options for women, but the Turner girls are not without guile and talent. Vaudeville is king, and with their determination and dexterity, the sisters cobble together an acrobatic act that will take them to every little town and village across upstate New York. Traveling by train, dragging their scant possessions in a cardboard suitcase, the teenage girls find it's a tough life, but as they come to know their audiences and fellow performers, Winnie and Gert, especially, gain valuable life lessons in the hard realities of sexism and racism, competition and compassion. The great-granddaughter of a vaudevillian, Fay (The Shortest Way Home, 2012) brings an unrivaled verisimilitude to the community of hardworking, resilient, and spirited entertainers who created their performing lives out of both desperation and desire.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2016
A novel of the vaudeville circuit, circa 1919. An ordinary working-class family in Johnson City, New York, is threatened with penury when breadwinner Frank, a usually sober boot stitcher, gets into an uncharacteristic bar brawl and injures his hand. Fortunately for the Turners, however, wife Ethel, aka Mother, has always had a yen for the stage. She quickly molds her four daughters, Kit, Winnie, Gert, and Nell, ranging in age from 13 to 22, into a vaudeville act, the titular tumblers. (Nell, a war widow with an infant, is based on the author's great-grandmother.) The group attracts an agent who sends them, with Mother as chaperone and producer, on a tour of upstate New York's vaudeville theaters. (Every small town near the tracks appears to have one.) From here, any further resemblance to the musical Gypsy unfortunately ends. The new troupers encounter a motley crew of performers, including Tip, an African-American tap dancing virtuoso; Case and Wheeler, a Yiddish comedy team; and Joe and Lucy, Italian immigrant musicians who are on the boards for the same reason as the Turners: avoiding poverty. Complications ensue: bigoted pigeon wranglers get Tip fired--in retaliation, Winnie liberates their flock--and a grifter steals Mother's hidden cash. Tip reappears during another gig, and he and Gert fall in love, risking arrest for miscegenation. Winnie, whose ambition is to go to college and become a doctor, also falls hard for Joe. Meanwhile, Mother carries on a flirtation with an orangutan handler. Eventually, Frank regains the use of his hand, but by this time, the Turner women are too stage-struck to resume respectable life in Johnson City. Winnie and Gert alternate as first-person narrators, but their voices are virtually indistinguishable. Fay handles the story's issues of racial and ethnic prejudice with a gingerliness which verges on anachronism, and contemporary locutions, like "move on with her life," further dispel the 1919 atmosphere. Fay's gentle humor and risk-averse approach don't do justice to her rollicking subject matter.

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