The launching of the battleship, during which the champagne was broken and the speech was given by Senator Harry Truman, happened in January 1944. Then—as apparently it goes with shipbuilding in general—it was sent into the open waters where months of test drives and interior work took place. A commissioning happens when the ship is ready to go into service. Sometimes, this includes a new round of pomp and circumstance. Sometimes it doesn’t.

The commissioning of the USS Missouri happened on June 11, 1944.

Shipbuilding novice that I am, I didn’t initially realize that they were two separate events. And my husband—a U.S. Marine—didn’t know that either. So I didn’t feel too bad.

For the purpose of storytelling, I needed the celebratory event to take place in June because the excitement would then be tempered with the discovery of all that happened days before on D-Day. So, as historical fiction writers have the license to do, I combined the launching with the commissioning. And with the assumption that many readers would—like me—not know the difference, I wanted to clear up this necessary inaccuracy in an author’s note for the purpose of education.

So now if that’s ever a Jeopardy! question, you’ll know the difference. (That’s my answer for every otherwise useless fact that I learn.)

An additional timeline I stretched was that of the wedding reception at the Algonquin Hotel. The Algonquin is a small boutique hotel in the heart of New York City. I have stayed there several times, but any trip to New York finds me having at least one overpriced, cinnamon-sprinkled cappuccino there just to soak in the literary ambience. It was renovated to what you see today in 1946, and George and Dottie’s wedding happens in 1944. However, I wanted to weave a scene of this beloved and historic place into the book and hopefully inspire readers to visit it when they’re in the city. To do so, I fudged the years by a hair. However, the story about the history of the cats is true and to this day, you will find a resident cat at the Algonquin. As of this printing, it is currently a Hamlet.

(In the lobby of the Algonquin, you will find a small display case of books about New York or written by New Yorkers. My third book, The Way of Beauty, sits face out right next to a memoir by Howard Stern. It is a rather interesting pairing.)

Of additional historical note, there was, indeed, a hurricane that hit the Long Island area in September 1944. I had not originally set out to write a scene like that, but it seemed too good a detail to pass up!