The Titanic Survivors Book Club

An American expat in Paris discovers that he’s dead—according to an article he reads at the pub after work. After seeing his name on an official list of passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic, Yorick receives a strange message: a ship-in-a-bottle invitation to a Titanic survivors support group. He finds himself in the company of ticket holders who didn’t embark on the ill-fated voyage. One is Zinnia, a vivacious candy heiress whose first-class reservation was denied along with her family’s because of her Japanese mother’s race. Another is the elusive, handsome Haze. Yorick, Haze, and Zinnia become entangled in a complicated love affair. Meanwhile, Yorick balances the pressures of his bookstore, his sexual identity, and a book club that he organizes for the support group. Punctuating the story are the club’s musings on Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, Oscar Wilde, and many other fin-de-siècle authors and thinkers. Themes of death and survivorship grow stronger when World War I ravages Europe.