April 30, 1912

My dearest Charlotte,

I expect it will be several weeks before you receive this. I am posting this letter from our ship in Cuba, and it may be weeks before the mail service comes to collect it. By then, I hope Wink and Olly will have settled into their new life with you, and you with them. I thank the stars every day for placing you in their path, our path. Your adopting them through the Home for Little Souls was a pinch of sugar in a very bitter tea, and I know their lives will be changed for the better on account of it.

As for the rest of us, we are muddling through as best we can. It is only Ming Lai and me now, as Bo promised Tao that he would see Fong back to his daughter in Hong Kong. May that old geezer live out the rest of his years in whatever peace he can manage. Bo will rejoin us in Cuba. The loss of my sister—it hurts to even write her name—has cut us both deep. As for me, I intend to embrace life the way she would’ve wanted me to. She’d always had enough life in her for the two of us, and now I shall live for the both of us. As I understand, there are exceptions for students in the Exclusion Act. But my dearest, even if that path does not open for me, as long as there are stars in the sky, I will look for the one that leads back to you.

I enclose letters for the lads.

Yours truly,

Jamie

Author’s Note

Of the seven hundred survivors of the Titanic disaster, six—of an original eight—were Chinese men, probably seamen of some sort. But little is known about them. Unlike the rest of the survivors, their stories were not reported. While every other survivor was welcomed into America and given succor, these six were shipped off within twenty-four hours of arrival. The rare mentions of the Chinese passengers vilified them as cowards who took seats from women and children or dressed as women in order to sneak aboard the lifeboats, all of which were unfounded rumors.

A culture of discrimination against the Chinese, codified by the Chinese Exclusion Act, ensured that they would be written out of the story. Yet it’s remarkable that six of the eight—or 75 percent—lived, when the overall survival rate for third-class passengers was 25 percent. It’s likely that none of the eight spoke English, so they would not have understood orders easily. Stationed in the bottom decks, the Chinese would’ve had to grasp the situation and react quickly.