The Survivors Guild

In 1912, Nabiha “Bea” Nohra leaves Lebanon and boards the RMS Titanic to find work in America. On the same ship, heiress Marguerite Ashby sails home to celebrate her engagement to a dull British lord, a marriage that will secure her new-money family’s place in old New York society. In France, recently-divorced Jeanne Laroche wants only to raise her newborn son, not to reconcile with her persistent ex-husband. Three women, three classes, all brought together by one ill-fated shipwreck.

When the Titanic sinks and Bea pulls Marguerite to safety, they find themselves on a lifeboat caring for a baby boy whose parents, they fear, must be among the lives lost. In New York, the women form a committee to aid survivors and locate the baby’s extended family while Bea works as his nanny and Marguerite ends her engagement, realizing status is not worth marrying a man she doesn’t love. Meanwhile, after learning her ex-husband kidnapped her son and boarded the Titanic, Jeanne arrives in America, seeking aid from the committee to uncover their fates.

With her family in Lebanon facing increasing difficulties, Bea considers an offer from Marguerite’s parents: they will pay for her family’s passage to America if Bea convinces Marguerite to marry the British lord to secure societal acceptance. But Marguerite hopes the committee will win society’s respect and render an advantageous marriage unnecessary—if only to placate her parents, because her broken engagement will seem a trivial sin once they find out she is falling for the opposing new-money family’s son. And when both Jeanne and another woman claim the baby in Bea and Marguerite’s care, Jeanne must locate her ex-husband, dead or alive. Without him, proving she is the real mother will be nearly impossible, and she could lose her son altogether.

The committee might bring these women social status, reunited families, and solved mysteries. Or perhaps the committee’s fate and, in turn, the women’s, will be like that of the Titanic’s—a grand ambition full of hope, truth, and promise, yet failed.

© 2026 Harper Muse (Hljóðbók): 9781400351374

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Hljóðbók: 1 september 2026