I interviewed Anna Lee Huber for the New Books Network about her Lady Darby series just last year, when book 11, A Fatal Illusion, came out. As she notes below, the twelfth book in that series was released in June. I’m amazed that she can write so fast and so well: her latest Verity Kent novel, The Cold Light of Day, also hit the shelves this past Tuesday. But somewhere in between writing the next installments of those two series and crafting a proposal for an unrelated project, Anna found the time to produce Sisters of Fortune, a stand-alone story about three sisters who boarded the Titanic expecting a swift and luxurious trip to New York.
We all know how that voyage turned out, but the important point to remember is that the sisters and their relatives, based on a real family from Canada, did not. Read this interview to find out more, both about the current novel and Anna Lee Huber’s writing plans.
You mention in your author’s note that your editor suggested you focus a novel on the Titanic. I think we can assume that all our readers know what happened to the boat, but what does the Titanic, as a symbol, represent for you?
Honestly, I don’t see it as a symbol of anything. From the moment of its sailing, through its voyage and sinking, and down through history, people have tried to imbue it with meaning and allegory. But having done so much research on it and read so many survivor statements, the thing that is most crystal clear to me is that it was simply a terrible accident. A moment in history that because of a number of factors—the immensity and marvel of the ship, the fame and wealth of some of its passengers, the scope of the tragedy—captured the public’s fascination, then and now. It’s human nature to try to make meaning out of such an event, to try to pinpoint fault and ascribe blame, if nothing else so that we can feel better and avoid it happening to us. But the truth is, there was no maliciousness at play, merely ignorance and foible. It was a terrible, terrible accident. Nothing more.
How did you discover the Fortune sisters, and what made you decide to make them the heart of your story?
I was searching through a list of passengers when I stumbled across the Fortune family. Six of them sailed on the Titanic, and three of them were young, unwed women all in their twenties. I instantly wanted to know who they were and why I’d never heard of them. Just a brief search turned up so much interesting information about them that I decided they had to be the focus of my story.
As a writer, you had some control over your characters’ fates, especially the fictional ones, but did knowing what happened to those who really lived affect your approach to the story?
Absolutely. I didn’t want my characters to stray too far from reality or credibility. Everything I could uncover about the characters affected what I wrote about them. While plotting, I had to work within the constraints of the events I knew had occurred on the Titanic and the actions and words recorded about the Fortune family, and then carefully weave my story through those threads.
We’ll approach the three sisters from eldest to youngest. What do we need to know about Flora? Here and below, I’m asking about your vision of the character rather than the historical person.
Flora is nothing if not responsible and dutiful. She thrives on pleasing her parents and others. Being lost somewhat in the shuffle of such a large family, it’s how she receives attention, and consequently why she believes she’s loved. She even postponed her wedding to the man her parents selected for her in order to join her family on their Grand Tour of Europe and the Mediterranean so that she could serve as a chaperone to her three younger siblings. (The two oldest Fortune children who were already wed remained in Canada.) But now that the family is headed home, she finds that she’s dreading her upcoming nuptials. She knows her intended is an upstanding gentleman, but their relationship is courteous and tepid at best. She feels nothing for him, and perhaps even worse, it’s evident he feels nothing for her as well. As a result, for perhaps the first time in her life, she’s struggling with her sense of duty to her parents and her own desires. And then she meets Chess Kinsey, someone who seems to truly see her for who she really is and admires her for it, and she must face an impossible choice.
Alice comes next in line. What distinguishes her personality and her circumstances from those of her older sister?
Alice is also engaged when her family sets sail for Europe and their Grand Tour. However, she is head over heels in love with her fiancé, and he her. But that doesn’t stop her from wanting to make the most of their travels. For most of her life, Alice has been coddled and protected because of a lung illness she suffered from as a child. Her family sees her as fragile, but she thrives during their voyage. She’s determined to make the most of her adventures because it’s clear that her family and intended still believe she needs to be cosseted. As such, she’s also dreading the end of their journey. As much as she misses her fiancé, she can’t help but be dismayed by the sheltered life he intends them to lead back in Canada. Yet she fears his reaction if she reveals she’s not the same person he thought she was. And then she receives an unsettling fortune from a soothsayer in Cairo, Egypt, that sets her on edge.
The youngest girl, Mabel, has quite different ideas about the ideal life. Tell us a bit about her.
Unlike her older sisters, Mabel has no desire to marry or live a traditional life. She wants to go to university, to have a career, and to fight for women’s right to vote, among other things. However, her parents are determined she follow protocols and do her duty, which is to marry a suitable gentleman and produce children. Strong-willed and stubborn like her father, Mabel frequently butts heads with him, even going so far as to encourage the attentions of an entirely unsuitable jazz musician in order to wear them down. But it’s not working, and as they board the Titanic, Mabel sees her chance to bring her father around to her way of thinking slipping away.
The three daughters are accompanied aboard ship by their parents and brother, Charlie. Can you say a bit about the family dynamics and where Charlie fits into the whole?
Mark Fortune is a self-made man. He began with nothing, building his wealth to become a millionaire. Now he wishes to see his family settled and well-cared-for and decides to take them on a Grand Tour, both to give them polish and as a treat following Charlie’s graduation. As the youngest child of six, Charlie has led somewhat of a cosseted existence, especially since his only brother is also the oldest. He’s been doted on by his mother and four older sisters for most of his life. Easygoing and inquisitive, he has become intensely interested in the marvel that is the Titanic, determined to learn all he can about its workings. And contrary to his sisters, as a male, his life is wide open with possibilities. He need only choose what his next step or next course of study will be when they return home. This is something he rather takes for granted, and that his sisters might resent him for if not for how unpretentiously amiable he is.
Chess Kinsey, as you note at the end, is entirely your creation. What does he add to the novel?
Chess is entirely fictitious, but parts of his personality and story are a conglomeration of several other passengers’. There were two tennis players on board the Titanic, and they inspired my decision to make Chess a tennis star. My main purpose in creating him was to set up a shipboard romance with Flora. Flora is the character I deviated most from the known facts about, for various reasons, and since I was already taking so much license with her story, I didn’t want to compound this by falsely matching her with another real passenger. However, the scenes written in Chess’s point of view also allowed me to take readers into parts of the ship that were exclusive to males. It also gave me the opportunity to include parts of the sinking and aftermath that I would not have been able to with only the sisters as my narrators.
This book came out this past February. Are you already on to something new?
Yes. It’s been a busy year. A Deceptive Composition, the twelfth novel in my Lady Darby Mystery series, released in June, and I’ve already turned in Book 13 to my editor (which will release in 2025). The Cold Light of Day, Verity Kent Book 7, will also be published this year, on September 24, and I’m currently writing Book 8. And I’m also working up a proposal for a Gothic dual-timeline novel I hope to submit to publishers before the end of the year.
Thank you so much for answering my questions!
Anna Lee Huber is the USA Today bestselling and Daphne award-winning author of the Lady Darby Mysteries, the Verity Kent Mysteries, and the Gothic Myths series, as well as Sisters of Fortune and the anthology The Deadly Hours.
Image: Photograph of a collapsible lifeboat like some of the rescue boats on the Titanic, taken by J.W. Barker, a passenger on the Carpathia, the ship that answered the Titanic’s distress call, and published in The Sphere (London, May 4, 1912), public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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