The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor

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No matter how many articles you read or how many stories you listen to about the Titanic, our curiosities are as humungous as the ship itself. We know how it set sail. We know how it went down. We cannot fathom what happened in between. 

The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor addresses just that. 

From the author's website, I learnt that Hazel had always been so inspired to write a story around the Titanic's maiden voyage, which never happened. Finally, in the centenary year in 2012, she came up with this story. This book has been inspired by true events of 14 Irish emigrants who left their homes in County Mayo, Ireland to travel on Titanic to relatives in America. She researched extensively on the Titanic from fixtures to knives to learn about the grandeur of the ship and what it must have meant to the passengers who were traveling that day. She wrote this book from the perspective of what really happened to the survivors much later. Where did they go? What did they go through emotionally to have lost everything on that ship - bag, baggage and dreams. 

The story is in dual timeline - Maggie, a young Irish lady in 1912, traveling with 13 others from her hometown Ballysheen in Ireland, on the Titanic, heading to the Americas. 

Much later into the timeline is 1982, Grace, Maggie's great granddaughter is studying Journalism and had to quit studies in between to take care of her mum after her father passed away in an accident. 

Maggie's story of being a Titanic survivor, resurrects not only memories for Maggie but also Grace's interest in completing her education. 

It's a good story. There are many characters. You will come to realize that you don't have to follow the characters at all. You don't have to keep a track of who are on the ship, how many, how are they related, etc., which is something we are attuned to do when we read books. Here we follow the character's journey and their dreams. Each one's sacrifice of giving up their current lives and boarding the Titanic for so called better future. Who was to know those dreams would be crushed against an iceberg in the middle of a calm night? 

This book will make us what the characters were going through. I loved to listen about the grandeur of the Titanic and also saddened to imagine what it must have felt for people to just go into the cold Atlantic waters. The narration by Connor Kelly-Eiding and Alana Kerrwas were beautiful and soothing. 

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