Review: Great potential, not so great in execution
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 2, 2013
The title creates disappointment- the Titanic is a very small part of this book.  The medical parts of the book are the best, as one might expect of a physician-author. However, it suffers from some serious flaws. The first is the lack of a timeline. If you're writing a historical novel, it's important to cue the readers WHEN it's happening. Up until the chapter about the building of the Titanic, there were no specific cues about what year it was. Children didn't seem to age logically- for example, in one chapter, a child is described as missing her front teeth, AND attending junior high- with no explanation of an accident having knocked her teeth out! It was more like the author forgot from time to time how old the children were.  The number of children in a family also fluctuated, as did the names of the children. But the biggest flaw was the buildups that didn't pay off. More than once, what appeared to be a fascinating story line would stop, suddenly, never to be heard of again. It seemed like the author was trying to keep the page count down (a worthy motive, as the book runs to over 600 pages as is), but it resulted in a choppy, underdeveloped feel that made it hard to become interested in minor characters because they might vanish in a page or two. My recommendation to the author is to revise the book into a series about a family of physicians, drop the misleading title, use a timeline and character list to avoid errors, and write slower. Take the time to elaborate on story lines, carry them out to their logical conclusions (small spoiler: when the patient dies, I was really expecting that John would be sued, and I expected Anne Elizabeth to be much more devastated after the sinking of the Titanic; in both cases both characters seemed to just turn off their memories and not think about the tragedies much in later chapters). I would have loved to have read more about John's medical practice in the early 1900s, and more about the early days of the Mayo Clinic. Sometimes, there were years between chapters and big events were skipped, at other times it was hard to tell how much time had passed, which was confusing. If the author isn't familiar with Delderfield, I recommend he read the Swann family saga, and consider turning this book into a similar series...it has potential.