First published 2024
Alice Fortune stands at the ship's rail as the RMS Titanic cuts west across the Atlantic in April 1912. She should feel triumphant. The Grand Tour is behind her: Italian castles, Greek ruins, the markets of Egypt. Instead, a fortune teller's warning in Cairo sits heavy in her chest, and ahead waits a fiancé who has mapped out a life she no longer wants. Her sister Flora is in a quieter kind of trouble. Her parents approve of her banker fiancé completely, which used to feel like enough. Now another man keeps crowding her thoughts, charming and entirely wrong on paper. Youngest sister Mabel was sent on this tour to forget a jazz musician. She has not forgotten him. And then there is Helen, who carries the most private secret of all: she has little interest in marriage, and her real passion runs toward suffrage and reform. Anna Lee Huber builds this novel from the documented lives of the real Fortune family. The four sisters move through the voyage with their plans still intact, their futures still negotiable. Then the ship hits ice, and nothing stays negotiable for long.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, historical-romance, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, dramatic, intimate, introspective, poignant
Tropes: family-secrets, found-family, second-chance-romance
Setting: RMS Titanic, Atlantic Ocean, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Cairo
Period: April 1912, Edwardian era, Early 20th century
416 pages · Paperback · Kensington