by Shana Abe
Maybe driving away, far, far away, never turning back.
The limousine always turned back.
One early gray dawn in the middle of August, she awoke to find her nightgown soaked hot between her legs, and for a confused moment thought her courses had come, finally, at last. But then the pain rolled through her, a great tidal wave of pain, and, gasping, she rang for Carrie, who gathered up the doctor and the other nurses like a bossy hen rounding up her errant chicks. Mother arrived in her dressing robe to hover near the headboard, telling Madeleine how brave she was, how brave her daughter was, but Madeleine really only wished that no one would talk to her at all, because the pain was a volcano now, a continent, the entire world, and it was all she could do not to scream, and she was afraid of what she might scream if she opened her mouth.
Jack’s name, a curse, a plea. She didn’t know. They were all there inside of her, violently pushing to come out.
Their son entered the world with a final cresting rush of agony and, after a few seconds, an indignant bawl.
They cleaned him up and placed him in the cradle of her arms, against her sweaty skin, her heaving chest. He felt heavy and foreign, like nothing that could have actually just come from inside her own body.
How awful that was, she thought, exhausted, remote. How wonderful. How awful and wonderful to feel him like this, above my heart, just where his father used to rest his head.
She didn’t look at him at first, that tiny, weighted thing. She was still trying to align her senses, to hold back words or tears or anything else she didn’t want to share with this roomful of people, in this fresh crack of morning with its bright warming light.
With his head against her collarbone, her baby made a questioning noise, a cross between a whimper and a cry. Madeleine lifted her hand to his face. She stroked his perfect new skin, smooth beneath his sticky heat; the creases of his eyes and mouth; the delicate seashell shape of his ear.
She brushed a kiss to his forehead, then dropped back to her pillows. They breathed together, chest to chest. Through the resonance of flesh and bone, she imagined she felt his heartbeat, a faint hammering simultaneously fragile yet certain, so desperately swift it might belong to a hummingbird darting across the sky.
EPILOGUE
I would not attempt to guess at the nature of true love, except to say that when I was immersed in it—swimming through it, breathing it in, holding that breath, exhaling—in those short, extraordinary days and nights I shared with your father, true love was absolutely clear to me.
Jack was clear to me. Jack was me, and I was him, and you, sweet child, are now us both.
Such crystalline perspective, and gained at such a price. It is Survival’s gift to me, I must assume. It is the gift I will cling to, holding my breath to keep it safe and alive inside me.
Only exhaling at the very, very end, when I know I’ll see him smiling at me once more.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book began with a phone call. My wonderful agent, Annelise Robey, wanted to know if I’d be willing to pitch a story about Titanic to Kensington Publishing. I said, “Yes!” and quickly settled upon Madeleine Astor as my protagonist, a 1912 version of a young Princess Diana if there ever was one. I thought to myself, “This’ll be easy!” Then I set about researching.
And researching.
And researching.
There is a lot of information out in the wilds regarding Titanic, its passengers and crew, and not all of it is credible, to put it mildly. There was far less information about Madeleine herself. For the most part, I was able to trace the footprints of her life through archived newspaper articles, nearly all of them period. The New York Times was a particularly valuable resource in this regard, as it was essentially her hometown paper. Here are some others, in no particular order:
For a closer look at the first-class world of the passengers aboard Titanic, try Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage by Hugh Brewster.
Encyclopedia Titanica (encyclopedia-titanica.org) is an exhaustively detailed, fascinating site dedicated to all facts Titanic. Fair warning: it’s very easy to lose hours and hours there.
Another interesting site is the Titanic Inquiry Project (titanicinquiry.org), where you can read actual transcripts of both the American and the British Titanic inquiries, including verbatim survivors’ testimonies.
In 1926, Vincent Astor decided to auction off practically everything in the Fifth Avenue chateau (the mansion itself was subsequently demolished). The Internet Archive (archive.org/details/paintingsfurnish00amer) has a searchable file of the auction catalog, if you’d like to get a peek at how the really, really rich decorated.
Interested in the fashion of the era? Take a look at Titanic Style, by Grace Evans.
Research is the blood and bones of The Second Mrs. Astor, but the heart of it is the living, breathing people who helped me out, over and over. I want to thank Annelise and everyone at the Jane Rotrosen Agency for their many years of encouragement and support.
And I am lucky enough to have the hardworking and talented Wendy McCurdy—who was actually my very first editor for my very first book, so long ago!—return as my editor once more.
My friend Bev Allen gave me a great big happy surprise when she directed me to the Missouri Historical Society’s Frances Hurd Stadler Titanic Collection. Bev’s first job out of grad school had her working with Frances, the daughter of Carlos and Katherine Hurd. It’s through Bev that I know someone who knew someone who knew someone who was aboard the Carpathia with Madeleine!
And, of course, I must acknowledge all the love and strength provided by my incredible husband Sean: my sounding board, my steady anchor, my true north.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
The Second Mrs. Astor
About This Guide
The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s
reading of Shana Abé’s The Second Mrs. Astor.
Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the story, Madeleine is a sheltered seventeen-year-old socialite who has just graduated from finishing school. By the end of the novel, just two years later, her world is radically different. Do you think she handled the transition from relative obscurity to fame well? What would you have done differently?
2. Jack Astor was a man far more complex than the press portrayed, yet he was still incredibly wealthy, powerful, and renowned. Was he walking a morally ambiguous line by courting a teenaged girl nearly thirty years his junior? Do you believe he actually loved her, or was it just libido? Does the time period help excuse the age difference between them?
3. One of the biggest impediments to the potential marriage of Madeleine and Jack was the fact of his divorce. In the end, the minister who performed the ceremony had to be paid a staggering sum to overcome his qualms about the union. Do you think it was fair to punish both Madeleine and Jack for the perceived moral failing of his divorce from Ava? Have our views of divorce since then changed for the better or worse?
4. Their wedding ceremony took place just over a month after their engagement was publicly announced. Were Madeleine and Jack right to insist upon a swift, small wedding, instead of the huge social blowout that was more typical of their time and station? Do you think the primary motivator behind it all was their growing love for each other, or more a fear of the escalating scandal?
5. “I wish I were as brave as you,” Madeleine confesses to her sister. Do you think bravery was one of Madeleine’s inherent traits, or not? What does her comment tell you about her insight into herself? When Katherine replies that she wishes she were as strong as Madeleine, do you agree that Madeleine is strong?
6. Madeleine’s relationship with the press evolves over the course of the story. Do you think how she treated them was justified? Do you think how she was treated by them was justified?
7. While sipping bouillon one afternoon on the deck of the Titanic, Madeleine encounters a fan and realizes: “The real world was rushing in again at last, predictab
le, inexorable. There were going to be girls like this around every corner from here on out.” Was Madeleine being snobbish to Helen Bishop when Helen tried to befriend her? If so, why do you think she acted like that?
8. Madeleine never interacted with anyone from steerage while aboard Titanic. Were you surprised when she gave away her fur shawl, and later her sable coat, to the two steerage survivors?
9. As Titanic was sinking, no one in the Astor party had any way of knowing that Lifeboat Four was going to be one of the last to leave the ship, although it was. Should Madeleine have argued more forcibly to stay with Jack once it was clear he would not be allowed in the lifeboat? Or was she right to leave him behind?
10. Madeleine’s interaction with Vincent was contentious from the beginning. As his future stepmother, should she have tried harder to befriend him? Or do you think it was always a hopeless cause?
11. Madeleine says of Jack: “He is my rock and my true north and my whole heart.” How do you think she changed after suffering his death? Did her grief force her to grow as a human being, as a soul, or did she perhaps shrink? Or both?
12. Bonus question: Are you in a book club meeting right now? If so, what kind of wine are you holding in your hand? Extra points if it’s champagne!
Shana Abé is the award-winning New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, including the Sweetest Dark series and the Drákon series. She has a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Southern California and currently lives in the mountains of Colorado. Visit her online at ShanaAbe.com
