PUBLICATION EXPECTED IN 2024

GRACE

H.W. Coyle

A chance meeting between Lady Faith Rawlings, the spirited twelve-year-old daughter of an English earl off to visit her American grandmother, and George Lowe, the shy motherless son of a gentleman’s gentleman, turns into an adventure of a lifetime when Faith convinces George to join her in first class dressed as her friend “Grace.”

Their whimsical escapade becomes an unending nightmare when the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic ends in tragedy. George, quick to appreciate their plight, manages to make his way up into first class by assuming the guise Faith had fashioned for him and seeing to it she makes it to a lifeboat. George is saved only when a young gentleman who believes George is a girl, who has been overlooked in the ensuing panic, offers up his seat in one of the last lifeboats.

When they are reunited aboard the Carpathian and George learns that his father did not survive.Faith makes it clear that she has no intention of abandoning him. Alone and at a loss as to how to deal with the tragedy, George allows himself to be taken in hand by Faith as the two embark upon a new adventure, one that proves to be as precarious as it is exciting, for he does so as Grace.

Bit by bit, Grace is drawn into Faith’s world and is accepted, first by Faith’s American grandmother, Charlotte Gilford, and then by Faith’s mother, Lady Victoria Rawlings. This is no easy feat. Not only does Grace need to pass herself off as something she is not, but she must also overcome the barriers imposed upon her by society, one that determines the value of a person based on their lineage and birth. These are challenges that become all the more difficult when Grace is introduced to the charming Honorable Christopher Rawlings, the younger of Faith’s two brothers.