Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite
The incredible steamship named Titanic sank on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic on April 15, 1912, and books have been written and movies produced about this tragic steamship disaster. Troy Veenstra has written "Titanic: Echo of the Dying Confession" which covers the Titanic's demise but with a different slant. In journal format, the narrator of this chilling version tells of how he sought revenge for his father's tragic loss of his ownership of the famed White Star Lines when the White Star board sells the shipping line to American millionaire J.P. Morgan. The narrator is angered, incensed that his father, whom he worshiped, is treated badly by business associates and the building of the super steamships, the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Gigantic are to be built. The rest is well-known history.
"Titanic: Echo of the Dying Confession" is a unique work of fiction about the Titanic. Using italics to convey conversation, the author has the narrator transcribing his thoughts as he is dying. Once young, the narrator is now an old and grieving man as he sits on his ocean-side estate and gazes upon the Atlantic Ocean which he refers to as a "massive rolling grave site". He thinks of the revenge he sought and the pain it caused those who perished. This journal is long, descriptive and very Victorian, as befits the memories of a gentleman born in 1856. On page 199, the narrator says that his memoirs as contained in this story are "the longest confession of one man's transgressions ever written upon paper. But the writing is just how a man of those times would express himself, and the characters of both fictional and real people of the Titanic are true to the times and to history. Titanic fans and most of the others will love reading "Titanic: Echo of the Dying Confession."
