Well, Maggie, it’s time,” Grace announced as she embraced her beloved great-nana on the front porch of her small home. “I’m all packed, and Mom’s already ripping the old wallpaper off my bedroom wall! I’m finally leaving.”
Maggie held her for a little longer than she usually did.
“And about time too, young lady—you’ve a lot of life to catch up on. You take good care of yourself and show those newspaper folks what you’re made of.”
She pressed a small oval photo frame into Grace’s hands then.
“What’s this?” Grace turned the frame over and saw a faded black-and-white photo of a handsome young man who looked a lot like Jimmy.
“That’s your great-grandfather, dear. That’s Séamus just after he arrived in America. Handsome devil, wasn’t he? He always took very good care of me, you know.” Grace took a moment to study the image, unable to find any words. “And you make sure that young man of yours takes very good care of you,” Maggie added, smiling at Jimmy, who was standing behind Grace on the steps.
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that, Maggie. I’ll be taking very good care of Grace. I let her get away from me once. I’m not gonna make that mistake again in a hurry.”
“I’ll write you and call as often as I can,” Grace promised as she gave Maggie a final, tearful embrace. “And thank you, Maggie—for everything.”
The old woman understood and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“Go,” she said. “Go—and be happy.”
Maggie stood for a while on the doorstep after they’d gone, enjoying the warm fall sunshine on her face. As she watched the leaves swoop and swirl down to the ground, she felt a sudden urge to do something she hadn’t done for years.
Walking carefully down the few steps, she stood patiently under the big maple tree at the bottom of her garden, waiting, waiting for a leaf to fall.
“If you catch one you can make a wish,” she remembered Séamus telling her as they’d kicked through the piles of leaves the fall after they were married. “But you have to be quick.”
She’d never managed to catch one, and he’d laughed at her leaping around and chasing them down the street as the wind blew them just out of her reach.
She stood now, watching, waiting, and very gently, one solitary, brilliantly golden leaf fluttered down and fell into her hand, effortlessly. She smiled, closed her eyes, and made a wish.
EPILOGUE
Cass County, Illinois
September 1, 1985
As Maggie sat quietly in her bed, reading again over the journal she had written from Titanic as a young girl, she didn’t know that far away in the Atlantic Ocean, a group of scientists on board a research vessel were staring at a small TV screen, watching in disbelief as a blurred image of a ship’s hull came into view. Titanic’s final resting place had been discovered.
Reading the words she had written that fateful year, she allowed the memories to wash over her—remembering in all its vivid detail the splendor of that magnificent ship. As she read her words, she was completely unaware of the images being beamed around the world as Titanic revealed itself once again: the proud bow of the ship, whose perfectly polished decks she had once stood on; the china coffee cups she had once drunk from; the spinning top of a young boy whom she had once watched playing happily; the uilleann pipes of a man whose melodies had once brought tears to her eyes.
Maggie didn’t see any of these things, now embedded in the sandy sediment of the ocean floor, two miles below the surface. She didn’t see the murky waters, enriched with the memories of everything they washed over: each tiny fragment of crystal glass, each discarded shoe, each piece of painstakingly hand-crafted furniture, each of the three thousand men and the three million rivets it had taken to build Titanic. Maggie didn’t watch, didn’t know that the memory of fifteen hundred lost souls was being stirred by the movement of the water while the camera panned slowly over the ocean floor.
Reaching the end of her journal, she lay back quietly against her pillow, a picture of James Doyle clutched in her hands, her small black suitcase at her side, and the bundle of love letters neatly tied up and placed carefully in her coat pocket, exactly as they were the morning she’d left Ballysheen. As she lay, she recalled something she’d whispered to herself while the lifeboat she sat in was lowered over the side of Titanic to the water below. She repeated the words now into the silent darkness.
“I’m coming home, Séamus. I’m coming home. I’m coming home. I’m coming home.”
She closed her eyes then.
At peace.
Finally.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I now know that it takes a family to write a book.
To my family in England and here in Ireland, I owe a huge, huge thanks. You have all written at least one chapter of The Girl Who Came Home with your amazing encouragement, advice, and babysitting services and will never fully know how much your support means to me. I am quite sure that I would have pursued my idea to write a terrible book about baking if it wasn’t for your collective belief and honesty! Of course, I must especially mention the three men in my life, without whom there would, quite simply, be no book. Damien—thank you for giving me the space (and the attic!) to chase my dream. It may have taken four years to finally open, but I hope that bottle of champagne was worth it in the end. Max and Sam—your little notes, your little faces, your Lego people, biscuit wrappers, toy cars, and imaginary gladiatorial battles have been my constant writing companions, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you both so much for being patient and letting Mummy do her writing.
I must also acknowledge my “extended” family—friends, neighbors, and fellow writers dotted around the globe who have all hoorahed, consoled, and cajoled at the appropriate times, usually over a much-needed glass of wine. You all rock in very large quantities.
I am also delighted to have a new family to thank—my American “family” in New York! My wonderful agent, Michelle Brower, who will never know how much her very first message meant to me. My fantastic editor, Lucia Macro, for saying the magic word “yes,” for having such passion for my books, and for taking my writing on this new and exciting adventure. To Liate Stehlik, my publisher at William Morrow, and to the many other individuals who have worked on this book, I owe a huge thank-you: Mumtaz Mustafa for the beautiful, gasp-inducing cover art; Molly Birckhead and Jennifer Hart for their marketing brilliance; Laura Cherkas and the production and design team for their wonderful interior design and incredible eye for detail; the publicity team; and finally, Nicole Fischer for her tireless hard work and patience in answering my rookie questions. Your collective talents astound me and I am really quite humbled by you all.
With specific regard to Titanic research, I owe many thanks to Michael Molloy and Pauline Barrett of the Addergoole Titanic Society, who shared their parish’s amazing stories with me through their website and through Pauline’s wonderful parish book, The Addergoole Titanic Story—all of which inspired me to write this book. They patiently answered my questions and have been very supportive of my retelling of their parish’s Titanic story.
Thanks also to Michael Martin of the Titanic Trail in Cobh (formerly Queenstown) for answering my many questions and to Walter Lord, whose fascinating book A Night to Remember, first published in 1956, led the way for everyone who has written about Titanic ever since.
And finally, thank you to you, the reader. It is for each and every one of you that this book was written.
P.S.
About the author
Meet Hazel Gaynor
About the book
The Story Behind The Girl Who Came Home
Glossary of Irish Terms
Reading Group Discussion Questions
About the author
Meet Hazel Gaynor
HAZEL GAYNOR is an author and freelance writer. In March 2009, after a fifteen-year career in corporate training and development, Hazel swapped the
boardroom table for the kitchen table, where she has been writing ever since. Originally from Yorkshire, England, she now lives in Ireland with her husband, two children, and an accident-prone cat. This is her first novel. Contact Hazel on Twitter @HazelGaynor or visit hazelgaynor.com.
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About the book
The Story Behind The Girl Who Came Home
WRITING A NOVEL ABOUT Titanic has been a long-held ambition of mine. There was always something about the era, the images of the ship, and the story of the tragic maiden voyage that I found timelessly powerful, tragic, and romantic. After I had talked myself out of tackling such an enormous story for years, the centenary year came along in 2012 and gave me the final push to write about Titanic and her powerful legacy.
The Girl Who Came Home was inspired by the true events surrounding a group of fourteen Irish emigrants who left their homes in County Mayo, Ireland, to travel on Titanic to relatives in America. The group is known locally as the Addergoole Fourteen. When Titanic sank, the loss of eleven passengers from the Addergoole group represented the largest proportional loss of life from one region. For the purposes of this novel, the names of all fourteen passengers have been changed. The town of Ballysheen, although based on Lahardane in County Mayo, is fictitious.
Maggie Murphy is based on two of the youngest girls in the Addergoole group (Annie Kate Kelly and Annie McGowan), and Kathleen Dolan is based on Catherine McGowan, the woman generally credited with organizing the Addergoole group’s journey, although this has never been proven.
Annie Kate Kelly reported to the Chicago Herald that she believed she was the last woman to leave Titanic, being helped into lifeboat 16 at 1:25 A.M. by a steward she had befriended. Of course, we now know that lifeboat 4 was the last to leave Titanic, at around 1:50 A.M., and was followed by the four collapsible lifeboats.
In her later life, Annie McGowan did indeed confess her Titanic story to her great-granddaughter.
Peggy Madden’s character is based on Delia McDermott, who having gotten into a lifeboat, apparently returned to her cabin to fetch her precious new hat. Katie Kenny is also based on one of the girls from the Addergoole group, Nora Fleming, who was traveling to be reunited with her sister in New York and celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday on board Titanic on April 14, 1912.
The remaining characters in the Ballysheen group are loosely based on accounts of those who traveled in the party. With the exception of those noted below, the characters Maggie encounters on Titanic and all the events surrounding Grace and Maggie’s family life in Illinois and Ireland are entirely fictitious.
The character of Vivienne Walker-Brown is loosely based on Dorothy Gibson, an actress who sailed on Titanic and went on to play herself in Saved from the Titanic, a silent movie made about the disaster shortly after the event. Dorothy Gibson did indeed wear the same dress in the movie that she had worn the night the ship sank. Edmund, Vivienne’s dog, although fictitious, represents several dogs belonging to first-class passengers that were kept in the staterooms and were taken into the lifeboats. In total, three of the twelve dogs on board survived the sinking.
Some of the passengers whom members of the Irish group encounter aboard Titanic are based in fact. They include Father Browne, the Jesuit priest whose black-and-white images of Titanic are known worldwide; Father Byles, who led the Mass on the morning of April 14; Eugene Daly, the piper; the girl with the rash who was refused entry to the ship at Queenstown; young Douglas Spedden, the first-class boy playing with his spinning top; the Marconi radio boys, Harold Bride and Jack Phillips; and, of course, Captain Smith, Mr. Ismay, Mr. Andrews, Officer Lightoller, and Mr. McElroy. Thomas Durcan was the White Star Line agent in Castlebar.
The Marconigram messages at the start of each part of the novel are actual messages transmitted from Titanic and Carpathia. Any misspellings have been purposely included to remain authentic to the original messages.
The inquiries into the Titanic disaster, movies and books that followed, survivor accounts, newspaper reports, and continued media fascination with the event have all provided an immense amount of detail about the ship and her passengers. Details regarding Titanic’s construction, her fixtures and fittings, even down to the handles on the dinner knives, provide a rich seam of source material for anyone interested in the event. Throughout the novel, I have made every attempt to draw on the available information and portray authentically what life was like for passengers and crew aboard the ill-fated ship.
After reading detailed survivor accounts, I hope to have accurately portrayed what the experience was like for the survivors who made it onto the rescue ship Carpathia and into the New York hospitals. I also hope to have sensitively portrayed the experience of family and friends, many of whom went for several days without accurate information regarding the fate of their loved ones. We can only imagine how difficult those days and nights of not knowing must have been. These aspects of Titanic’s tragedy are perhaps less well known and have been less well documented, and it was these—the survivors’ experiences and the ordeal of family and friends back home—that I felt compelled to explore in writing this novel.
For further information on the Addergoole Fourteen, visit www.mayo-Titanic.com or visit Lahardane village in County Mayo, where you can walk Addergoole’s Titanic trails, featuring the homesteads, many now derelict, from which the Addergoole Fourteen left for a better life in 1912.
Glossary of Irish Terms
bodhrán (bow-ron): a shallow, one-sided Irish drum typically played using a short stick with knobbed ends
cailín (col-een): a girl or young woman; plural cailíní
céilí (cay-lee): an Irish/Gaelic gathering where traditional and folk music is played
craic (crack): enjoyable social activity, a good time
hooley: a wild or noisy party
jarvey: coachman; driver of a trap, cart, or jaunting car
melodeon: a small accordion, especially played by folk musicians
piseóga (pish-o-ga): superstitious practice
poitín (pot-cheen): a traditional Irish distilled alcoholic drink, made from potatoes or grain
Traveller: a tinker, gypsy, or other nomadic person
uilleann (ill-n): Irish bagpipes, played held on the knee using bellows worked by the elbow, and having three extra pipes on which chords can be played
Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary and from www.focal.ie, a dictionary of Irish terms.
Reading Group Discussion Questions
1. The Titanic disaster is one of the most documented historical events of the last century. By reading the book, what new information did you learn about Titanic? What most surprised you about the ship or the life of passengers on board?
2. We all know the fate of Titanic. What impact does this knowledge have on you as you read the book? How do you feel about the Ballysheen group as they leave their homes and as they board Titanic at Queenstown?
3. Kathleen Dolan is single-minded in her decision to take her niece back to America with her. Discuss Kathleen’s role in Maggie’s life and also her role in influencing the others in the Ballysheen group to travel to America.
4. There are several key relationships in the novel. Discuss your thoughts on the relationship between any of these: Grace and Maggie; Maggie and Séamus; Maggie and her aunt Kathleen; Frances Kenny and her sister, Katie; Maggie, Peggy, and Katie; Harry and Peggy.
5. Emigration was very common in Ireland in 1912, with many families separated by the belief and hope that there was a better standard of living to be found in America. The “American wakes” were common occurrences across the country, marking the departure of loved ones. Have you experienced emigration in your own family? How would you feel if you had to make a decision similar to that made by the Irish emigrants who set sail on Titanic?
6. Grace makes a brave decision to drop out of college and stay at home with her mother afte
r her father’s death. Does Grace have a choice in this? How do her decision and the sacrifices she makes for her family contrast with the decisions forced upon Maggie in 1912?
7. What does Grace learn about herself through her interactions with Maggie and by reading Maggie’s Titanic journal?
8. Who are you rooting for as the drama of the events of April 14–15 unfolds?
9. The passengers on Titanic are forced to make impossible decisions as the ship is sinking—wives leaving husbands, mothers leaving children in the care of their nannies. What do you think you would have done—or hope you would have done—under the circumstances?
10. The various warnings and predictions of disaster that the Ballysheen group experiences—the reading of the tea leaves, the warning from the stranger at Queenstown, the dropped “lucky” sovereign—are based on recorded facts. The near miss with the New York in the Southampton docks at the very start of Titanic’s journey also really happened. In addition, a novella, titled Futility; or The Wreck of the Titan was written in 1898 by Morgan Robertson and seems to predict much of the Titanic disaster: a large ocean liner sinks one April night in the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg and there are not enough lifeboats for all the passengers. Discuss the many aspects of superstition and myth that surround Titanic.