Synopsis

It’s 1911 and, against her mother’s wishes, quiet New Yorker Emma dreams of winning the right to vote. She is sent away by her parents in the hope distance will curb her desire to be involved with the growing suffrage movement and told to spend time learning about where her grandparents came from.

Across the Atlantic – Queenstown, southern Ireland – hotelier Thomas dreams of being loved, even noticed, by his actress wife, Alice. On their wedding day, Alice’s father had assured him that adoration comes with time. It’s been eight years. But Alice has plans of her own and they certainly don’t include the fight for equality or her dull husband.

Emma’s arrival in Ireland leads her to discover family secrets and become involved in the Irish Women’s Suffrage Society in Cork. However, Emma’s path to suffrage was never meant to lead to a forbidden love affair…

Review

This book swept me up, destroyed me and then put me back together.

When I was 7, we learned about the titanic, and my teacher shared how her father waved it off as a boy. Studying such a huge tragedy at such a young age was difficult, but it’s always been a fascination of mine.

Enter Maid of Steel.

What I loved about this, was that it wasn’t about the Titanic. Kate tells us a tragic love story that only involves the sinking at the very end, but this means that the tension is palpable throughout. We know someone will be on the ship, but we don’t know who or why. It’s a fantastic way to keep an audience engaged without reworking an existing story.

And oh the characters! I cared about everyone so much and couldn’t bear to think of any of them aboard the ship. Emma is fiercely independent, scarred and broken and yet she has a strong sense of justice and wants to make a difference. She was so admirable considering everything she’d been through. All the ladies who get involved with the cause are credible and represent the different demographics and beliefs of the time.

There are also little side plots that link all the characters’ histories and I loved these extra layers of detail to help us understand everyone’s motivations.

Although the ship isn’t the main character, it could have had a little more airtime, but I understand why the author did this, so we could focus on the aftermath, the decisions made by the characters and the consequences.

I loved it and am very excited for Kate’s next book which sounds brilliant.