This was a very engaging novel that moves along pretty briskly, and which I read in it's entirely on a cross-country flight. The story opens with launch of the Titanic, and our heroine, Tess, manages to talk her away aboard as a maid for a fashion designer. They all manage to survive, and Tess (who is really a seamstress) is taken under the designer's wing. Much of the rest of the book centers around Tess getting used to her new life in New York, and the hearings that followed the disaster. This is one of those books where the characters seem realistic, in part because they are so flawed. A great book with some wonderfully strong female characters.