The Captain's Daughter by Leah Fleming

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK 
On Sale Date: January 1st 2012
Pages: 576

The Captain's Daughter is a book about two women and their relatives, who are bound together due to the Titanic disaster.

May Smith is traveling with her husband Joe and their baby daughter Ella from the back streets of Bolton, England to America, where they are planning to start a new life.
Celeste Parkes, and English lady who is married to an American industrialist, is traveling back to Ohio after her mother's funeral.
The Titanic hits an iceberg and May loses Joe and Ella out of grip and sight in the icecold water. May is saved and lands in the same lifeboat as Celeste, where they meet and start supporting each other. Then someone hands a baby in the hands of May from out of the water, and everyone is pretty sure it is captain Smith.  May thinks it is her baby Ella, but soon enough discovers that this baby has dark brown eyes while her Ella had blue ones.She isn't sure what to do now, especially now she lost her husband and has to move on alone.But Celeste, who considers May her new friends and who is inspired by the aid speech of Molly Brown, decidies to help her get on her feet. May decides not to stay in New Yorkm but to step on a ship back to England, where Celeste's family gets her work as a housekeepers for Celeste's father.
Meanwhile, Celeste moves back to Akron, Ohio, where she is met by her abusive husband Grover. Things get so out of hand one night when he beats her that she decides to flee with their young son Roddy. She lands in Washington DC, where she starts a new life, and works with an organisation to give women the right to vote. But then Grover starts to shadow her and kidnaps her son.

The third character in this book is Angelo, who's wife Maria and their little daughter are traveling to New York on the Titanic to start their new life there. But then Angelo get's the terrifying news of the sinking, and he is heartbroken for the loss of his wife and daughter. But slowly, he feels more and more that his daughter hasn't died. Especially because he found a little baby show on the docks where the Carpathia docked. The lace is made in the Italian region he is from, and he is sure it is from his daughter.

His daughter that now grows up as Ella in England with her mother May..

I had this book on my bookshelves for years, and as I was looking for a new historical fiction read, I decided to pick up this one. And I don't regret it, as this book was just brilliant! I love the books by Jennifer Donnelly, and this book fits in the line of her Tea Rose trilogy. So I think fans of this series will certainly like this book.
The storyline and characters where very impressing, and altough we all know the Titanic story, this gave it a nice point of view from different people, who are connected due to the disaster without even knowing it sometimes. I liked how the children of the main characters all got their own side story during the last part of the book, and how this led to a very good ending of the book.

Overall an impressive and nice long read, perfect for fans of the books by Jennifer Donnelly!