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Genre: Fiction: General
Imprint: Pennywell Books
Format: Paperback, 149 pages
Pub Date: February 2012
Price: $17.95
ISBN 10: 1-926881-52-4

ISBN 13: 978-1-926881-52-2

Shipping Weight: 0.3 kg

In 1925, in a London restaurant, J. Bruce Ismay, former chairman of the White Star Line, has a quiet dinner with his daughter Evelyn. Through the extravagant foliage of the dining room, a young woman watches. Like Ismay, Miranda Grimsden was a passenger on board the ill-fated Titanic that terrible night in April 1912. Fuelled by simmering emotions, Ismay, Evelyn, and Miranda take a backwards journey through the thirteen intervening years to confront issues of cowardice, spite, and revenge, and to dare themselves to exorcise the spectre of the past.

"Butler uses well-documented evidence on which to build this story, and he creates a finely-detailed psychological portrait. Not just of a man, but that of his family – and of the desperate self-delusion of which we are all capable in the face of unattractive truth. Add into the mix a climactic confrontation with another survivor of the Titanic, whose personal circumstances contrast sharply with those of Ismay, and Butler’s novel becomes quite suspenseful as well as absorbing."

Western Star

"Butler covers a lot of ground in a short space, and the flashbacks are vivid and well executed."

Quill & Quire

"Titanic Ashes resets the immense and famous tragedy on an intimate scale, interlaced with family loyalties and individual memories."

The Telegram

"Butler skilfully shows us the characters and their connections. By drawing the barest lines to delineate then, he lets us fill in the colours and shading of the relationships."

Northeast Avalon Times

Interview with Leigh Anne Power, CBC Central Morning Show, February 24, 2012
http://www.cbc.ca/centralmorning/episodes/2012/02/24/the-morning-show-podcast-for-february-24-2012/

Interview with Anthony Germain, CBC St. John's Morning Show, March 7, 2012
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/nlstjohnmorn_20120307_31196.mp3

View photos from the Titanic Ashes launch