"As the Titanic sank slowly into the frigid North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg late in the evening of April 14, 1912, the steamer, Californian was nearby, carefully watching. The desperate crew of the doomed liner signaled with Morse lamp and the new Marconi telegraph, and finally with eight distress rockets fired into the night sky. The men of the midnight watch on the Californian saw those rockets and reported them to the captain, but the ship did not respond. By morning, the Titanic lay at the bottom of the sea and more than fifteen hundred passengers and crew were dead. When the story of the disaster begins to emerge, Boston American reporter John Steadman becomes intrigued by curious inconsistencies in the formal statements of the Californian's captain, and suspects another, larger story lurks behind his words ... Told not only from the perspective of Steadman and the men of the Californian, but also through the eyes of a third-class Titanic family as they struggle to survive, The Midnight Watch is a dramatic, deeply knowing novel about the frailty of men, the strength of women, the price of loyalty, and the vagaries of fate"--From publisher description."
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