TEN CENTS A DANCE: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
TEN CENTS A DANCE
BY CHRISTINE FLETCHER

ABOUT THE BOOK:

When her mother becomes too ill to work, fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski is forced to drop out of school to support her family. Her dull factory job makes life one long dead end...until she meets neighborhood bad boy, Paulie. Soon, Ruby is getting paid to dance with lonely men—and learning how to "fish" them for cash, clothes, even jewelry. As long as her family doesn't find out what she's doing, her problems—and theirs—are solved. But secrets and bad boys are both hard to keep...especially when swinging with the hepcats turns into swimming with the sharks. A mesmerizing look into a little-known world and era, Ten Cents a Dance is resplendent with soul-shaking jazz, killer '40s style, and the passions of a young generation in a country on the brink of war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR,,,IN HER OWN WORDS:

I grew up in the Bay Area, a bit south of San Francisco. As a kid, I was always either reading or drawing. I drew pictures by the hundreds, mostly of dogs and horses (I wasn't any good at cats; I never could get their ears right). When I was seven, I invented veterinary medicine. That's right—invented. Doctor shows on TV fascinated me; symptoms seemed like clues, illnesses like mysteries to be solved. But I never was interested in doctoring people. I can't explain why. Some things just grab you in a way you can't resist, and animals were that way for me. So I figured I'd be a doctor who treated animals. Brilliant, right? I still remember my surprise when I found out other people had thought of it first. Hey—that was MY idea! Original or not, though, it was what I wanted to be. Fast forward through a whole bunch of school, a few graduation ceremonies, and voilà! A veterinarian at last. Still reading everything I could get my hands on, although drawing had long since fallen by the wayside. And writing? Occasionally I'd think, "You know, I bet I could write a book," but it was the kind of thought like, "I ought to make bread from scratch," or, "I sure would love to be able to play the guitar." In other words, nothing I took seriously. Meanwhile, my boyfriend and I moved to Tennessee. I fell in love with the landscape, the people, and perfect iced tea, but we weren't destined to stay; a few years later we moved again, this time to Oregon. Here, finally, I began to write. I'd like to claim that some noble Muse whispered into my ear, and, thus inspired, I began to create. I'd like to, but...no. The truth is, I was inspired by a novel. Which novel doesn't matter; what mattered was how much I loathed it. The cliches! The stale plot devices, the two-dimensional characters! And yet...I couldn't put it down. At the time, I felt obligated to finish every book I started. By the time I turned that final, 1,104th page, I'd made up my mind about two things. First, never again would I make myself read an entire novel I disliked. Second, if that person could write a book, then what was stopping me? OK, so it wasn't loftiest of purposes. Still, it kick-started me from saying I could write to actually doing it—or at least, trying to. I quickly gained a new, tremendous respect for the author of those 1,104 pages! But I kept slugging away. Writing had grabbed me, and I couldn't resist. Someone once asked me why people read novels. I realized that, as a reader, I'm hoping to discover something I've never imagined before. I want to be swept into the world the writer has created for me. I want the writer to be fearless, to lay bare what he or she knows to be true. Now that I'm a writer myself, this is what I try to bring to my readers. So now I wear two hats: veterinarian and writer. They use completely different parts of my brain, but they have this in common: no matter how much you know, you never know enough. It drives me crazy, but it's a good thing. These days I live in Portland, Oregon, in a 100-year-old house that constantly needs repairs, with my boyfriend of many years, an assortment of rescued dogs and cats, and a hognose snake named Snappy Tom. As I write, one dog snoozes in my office, while the other sneaks onto the sofa downstairs (she knows that clacking noises from the keyboard means I won't notice.) The cats take turns on my lap. Snappy Tom, meanwhile, dreams his snaky dreams. I imagine he dreams of mice, although he doesn't say.

MY REVIEW:

TEN CENTS A DANCE by Christine Fletcher is written on a rather unique subject when you consider that the book is directed more for young adults. That said, I will tell you as a senior citizen (ouch!) I thoroughly enjoyed the book and didn’t feel the author had written “down” to her target group. Fletcher writes with the skill of a seasoned author and does wonderful in-depth character studies without seeming “stuffy” in her style. The distinctly described setting is the era of the 1940’s. This was a time of when people made money anyway they could. Things were shaky at home due to the war and times they were living in being so difficult.

Fifteen-year-old Ruby lives in Chicago's meat packing district in 1941 with her younger sister and mother. After Ruby’s mother becomes ill and can no longer work, Ruby is forced to quit school and work to support the family. Working in a factory packing pickled pig's feet is the last thing that Ruby ever thought she would be doing. It is hard work and long hours. She aches all over and her fingers are swollen from the repetitive work. It isn’t hard to understand why when Paulie, a guy who doesn’t have the best reputation, tells Ruby he can get her a job dancing at a place where she can make $50 a week, that Ruby agrees immediately. Ruby loves to dance and how lucky is she that she can get paid all that money to do what she loves? Forget those pigs’ feet!

The job is even more appealing when Ruby finds out she will be dancing at the exciting Starlight Dancing Academy. She is naïve but she slowly realizes it is a little more than just dancing. However, Ruby is taken in by the glamour and excitement of it all. What harm can it be to flirt a little bit and go out to dinner with the men sometimes? She gets to wear pretty clothes and makeup but also knows her job is what others call a taxi-dancer and looked down on by decent people of the time. A taxi-dancer would dance with any man who would pay a dime to dance with the pretty girls like Ruby. Ruby slowly realizes what all this is and knows her mother would never approve. She is glad that she has not let her know how she is making this money.

Ruby starts to get deeper into the way of life with more things being asked of her and along with it comes trouble. She gets in so deep she doesn’t know how to get out. She doesn’t know who to turn to as she can’t go to her mother. Her mother has met a man and remarried and even told Ruby to quit working and go back to school which is a past Ruby can't even think of returning to. Will Ruby pull herself out before it is too late or will she become another statistic of that time period? Can she tell her mother now and ask for help when all this time she has been dishonest saying she was a telephone operator? Is her mother strong enough to take that, or is Ruby, for that matter? Not that I was alive for this period of our history but my uncle was a marathon dancer in those days and would tell us stories of what it was like and he even had a stage name. As a young girl, I remember thinking how exciting it was so it is easy to see how Ruby got herself into this mess. Based on an actual family member who was a taxi-dancer that the author researched extensively, Christine Fletcher does an amazing job recreating the time period and has written a wonderful novel that I highly recommend.

GIVEAWAY

MANY THANKS TO
AUTHOR CHRISTINE FLETCHER,
I HAVE TWO AUTOGRAPHED
COPIES OF THIS WONDERFUL
BOOK TO GIVE AWAY!


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