Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Titanic-Britt-Talley-Daniel-M-D/dp/1478105704
When I was in the sixth grade in 1956 I read an article in Reader's Digest about the sinking of the Titanic and I was hooked for life. Later when I wanted to write a book about it, before the Internet, I went to the downtown library in Dallas and read some articles from old yellow newspapers on microfiche but today a lot of research can be done within seconds at home through Google. I read an article about a woman who was set to sail from Southampton on the Titanic who had a dream the night before she left and then decided not to go. I put this dream into my story as a dream by the main character. Anne Elizabeth, dreaming as a child in London about rockets going off on the surface of the Atlantic. This seemed very spooky and special to me. And so the whole story seems that way. Women and children first, husbands waiting on deck watching their wives descend in life boats below them to the surface of the water. A story full of what ifs: no binoculars for the men on watch in the crow's nest, what if they had just gone straight into the iceberg, damaging maybe only 2 or 3 of the compartments but not 5 of them as the ship struck a glancing blow against the iceberg down her side, a nearby ship turned off her wireless too soon and could have saved all passengers if summoned, the same ship ignored the rockets indicating distress. The whole story fills the mind. I got the idea of merging a story of a family from London traveling to America on the Titanic with a grandson who later recovers family property from the sunken ship. What he found on the floor of the Atlantic became Titanic: The Answer From The Deep.