So you come from a poor family. Your only skills are the seamstress skills taught to you by your mother. You take a job requiring you be a maid for a wealthy family - a job you detest and, quite frankly, aren't very good at. Fed up with a job going nowhere and far from your dreams of fashion design, on a whim you walk out on your job and head towards the docks where you've been told a ship is leaving for America and they are in desperate need of workers. As luck would have it, you arrive too late for employment on the ship. The stars must be in perfect alignment because you spot one of the most famous designers heading towards the ship. As you make your way toward the woman, wanting to confirm the designers identity, you overhear the designer's worried conversation. It appears her maid has come down with an illness that will prohibit her from traveling to America with the designer. With only hours to find a suitable maid to accompany her, you -- the out-of-work seamstress/maid, volunteer your services. Sounds like a story too good to be true? Well, not exactly considering that it is April, the year is 1912 and the ship heading for America is the Titanic.

It was an interesting story about the differences in social classes and what appears to be a difference in values, honor and integrity among the classes as well. It is not a complicated story -- no mystery here. We all know the ship sunk, some survived, most did not and blame was tossed quickly and more violently than any oceanic storm. Tess, the lowly want-to-be seamstress and designer is torn between remaining loyal to her heart on the events of that fateful night or turning a blind eye to the greed and selfishness exhibited by some of the rich in an effort to save only themselves.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this book just didn't draw me in. It was well written, the characters were nicely developed and it was obviously (at least for me) about an interesting subject. However, I just didn't find myself wanting to put my daily tasks on the back burner just so that I could lose myself in the story. It was an easy, quick read and would probably make a good discussion book for a book club regarding human nature and how quickly our actions and motives can change from what we THINK we would do in a crisis to what we ACTUALLY do when survival is key.