The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn - featuring a dramatic rescue from the Titanic!

Cinderella meets All-of-a-Kind Family in a new book I loved and recommend. Elinor Hayward, the lovely and intelligent daughter of a prosperous factory owner, is thrilled when she and her father are invited to a New Year’s Ball in early 1910. Even better, she meets an attractive young man, Frederick Coombes, son of an earl, who is not just friendly but clearly interested in her:

It was stupidly easy to fall in love with Frederick; I got halfway there that very evening. But I’d like to point out, before you decide I must have been soft in the head, that I was nineteen, he was the first man ever to pay attention to me, and he was very, very charming.

Although Elinor and her father are not of a class that usually mixes with British aristocracy, she is swept off her feet and marries Frederick, only to learn on her wedding day that he married her for her money. But she is stuck and if she wants to make her marriage work, she has to conform. Once she has a son, however, and realizes he belongs more to the nanny than to her, she welcomes the opportunity of a trip with her father, husband, and son to America, on the famed Titanic, which at least will temporarily rescue her from the rigidity of life at Winterton Hall.

[Frederick] looked up frowning. “Five first class tickets? Must have cost a fortune.”

“Probably, yes. It’s not any old ship, after all.”

He flicked the tickets with his finger. “I’d rather he gave us the money, to put toward the roof repairs. Perhaps we could ask him to do that instead. I’m sure he could get a refund on the tickets.”

So casual, as though he was saying no thank you to an extra helping of beef. A jolt of panic ran through me. I’d been so excited about getting away from Winterton that it hadn’t occurred to me he might not want to go.

Elinor, who has not seen her beloved father for two years, is not giving up this trip. Of course, even readers who do not know much about history realize this voyage is not going to end well! Yet it is still very suspenseful as Elinor uses this tragedy to escape a life she believes would be wrong for her child, winding up on the Lower East Side just two years before the first book in the iconic All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor takes place, to give you some context. Even Elinor’s devoted father did not think she could be involved in his Manchester business but the impressionable young woman who fell in love with a stranger musters her wits and learns how to survive in a strange country, overcoming poverty, insecurity, and threats.

Seward Park Library

Those who have read All-of-a-Kind Family (about five sisters growing up in near poverty on the Lower East Side and the depiction of their family's Jewish traditions) will especially appreciate Elinor’s visit to the same public library cherished by the family of those books. The first time I found myself walking by the Seward Park branch of the New York Public Library on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I got very excited. The branch, dedicated in 1909 and renovated often over the years, is the same four-story, red brick Renaissance Revival building funded by Andrew Carnegie. Some 25 years ago, when I was living in Manhattan, I organized an outing for the New York Betsy-Tacy Society - a visit to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side and a walking tour of the area. It was a successful event, despite losing half our group on the tour – happily, they turned up for planned lunch at the famous Katz’s Deli.

Title: The Lost Passenger
Author: Frances Quinn
Publication: Ballantine Books, trade paperback, 2025
Genre: Historical Fiction
Source: Library

This is my fifth book for the 2025 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I did find some anachronisms – why don’t editors flag these things – for example, the first recorded use of “party pooper” was not until 1947. But I still enjoyed it and am grateful to Helen from She Reads Novels for recommending it in Books to Look Out for in 2025. This is Quinn’s third book but first to be published in the US.