Girl on the Carpathia: A Novel of the Titanic

Hodgetts (Titanic to All Ships) animates in this vibrant outing the events and aftermath of the Titanic disaster. The night of April 15, 1912, 21-year-old Kate Royston is on the deck of the Carpathia, fleeing the aftermath of a disastrous flood in her Pennsylvania hometown involving a dam built by her paper baron father that stained their name, and hoping to start a new life in Europe. She runs into Harold Cottam, the Marconi wireless operator, who has just received a distress call from the “unsinkable” Titanic. Carpathia’s Captain Rostron answers the call and rescues 700 Titanic passengers from lifeboats. Kate, remembering the bodies of the poor who drowned in her town, notices most of the survivors are wealthy. One, the politically influential and irascible Mrs. Eva Trentham, vows to make those in charge pay for the debacle. Later, while working with Kate, Eva encourages Sen. William Alden Smith of Michigan to conduct an inquiry into the causes of the disaster and loss of life. The author does a great job dissecting the catastrophe’s political aftermath and developing her characters. Hodgetts’s heartfelt story of Kate and Eva’s crusade adds a worthy chapter to Titanic lore. (Self-published)