The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic

by Hazel Gaynor

Overview

Inspired by true events, the New York Times bestselling novel The Girl Who Came Home is the poignant story of a group of Irish emigrants aboard RMS Titanic—a seamless blend of fact and fiction that explores the tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.

Ireland, 1912. Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the lucky few passengers in steerage who survives. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that terrible night ever again.

Chicago, 1982. Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her Great Nana Maggie shares the painful secret she harbored for almost a lifetime about the Titanic, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062316868
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Series:	P.S.
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	52,775
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Hazel Gaynor is the award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Romantic Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from The Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe and Mail bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year. Her most recent novel, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, was a USA Today and Irish Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award. Hazel’s work has been translated into fourteen languages. She lives in Ireland with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

A beautifully imagined novel rich in historic detail and with authentic, engaging characters - I loved this book. Hazel Gaynor is an exciting new voice in historical fiction.” — Kate Kerrigan, author of Ellis Island and City of Hope

“Readers will enjoy this lovely, heartfelt story.” — RT Book Reviews (4 Stars)

“I’ve been a huge fan of the Titanic for quite some time and LOVE reading everything from fictional based novels to non fiction about the lives that were forever changed that night. [...] I easily give this one a 5 out of 5 stars in my opinion.” — Reviews from the Heart

“A phenomenal book that is a must read!” — Examiner.com

“The Girl Who Came Home follows on the centenary remembrance of the Titanic in 2012. Is the world ready for yet another account of this tragedy? With this novel, the answer is a resounding yes“ — New York Journal of Books

From the Publisher

A beautifully imagined novel rich in historic detail and with authentic, engaging characters - I loved this book. Hazel Gaynor is an exciting new voice in historical fiction.

Kate Kerrigan

I’ve been a huge fan of the Titanic for quite some time and LOVE reading everything from fictional based novels to non fiction about the lives that were forever changed that night. [...] I easily give this one a 5 out of 5 stars in my opinion.

Reviews from the Heart

The Girl Who Came Home follows on the centenary remembrance of the Titanic in 2012. Is the world ready for yet another account of this tragedy? With this novel, the answer is a resounding yes“

New York Journal of Books

A phenomenal book that is a must read!

Examiner.com

Readers will enjoy this lovely, heartfelt story.

RT Book Reviews (4 Stars)

2014-03-06
The fictionalized saga of 14 Irish immigrants from a single parish who sailed on the Titanic. The year is 1982. Maggie, 87, has never discussed the voyage with any of her descendants, including her great-granddaughter Grace, a journalism student at Chicago's Northwestern University. Grace has been offered an internship at the Tribune—if she can pitch an original angle for a feature story. But when her father dies unexpectedly, she drops out of Northwestern to assist her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, also leaving her boyfriend, Jimmy. Two years later, Maggie jolts Grace back on the career path by deciding to finally come clean about her experience as one of the few third-class passengers who survived the Titanic. The historical sections cannot help but pull focus from the heartwarming frame story. A pastiche of journal entries, letters, telegrams and other archival material, some real, some convincingly faux, relates how 14 parishioners from the village of Ballysheen, County Mayo, decide to emigrate. Once aboard the revolutionary new ocean liner, Maggie and her giggly teenage girlfriends charm Harry, a Liverpudlian third-class steward, who devotes himself to making their passage pleasant. He helps Maggie send a "Marconigram" from the ship to Séamus, the love she left behind. Unfortunately, a certain iceberg intervenes. Her transmission is interrupted, altering its meaning. Harry manages to get Maggie on the last lifeboat; 12 of her fellow travelers are not so lucky. Gaynor wisely avoids the usual Titanic tropes (Astors and Strauses are scarcely mentioned), imagining the recollections of ordinary passengers and of the people anxiously awaiting news of them. Once Grace's article goes the 1982 equivalent of viral, the parallel stories wrap up a bit too neatly, especially in the romance department. Still, as the disaster's 102nd anniversary approaches, Gaynor's account surpasses, in subtlety if not in scope, so many flashier treatments.

Kirkus Reviews