deb reads....

so far this summer have read Devil's Gate about the 1856 Mormon handcart expidition....which I had never heard of. can u imagine ur family pushing & pulling a small wagon from Iowa 2 Utah? across the sanddunes of Nebraska...thru the mountains...across rivers....thru the snow....lots of them didn't make it.
have also read Titanic's Last Secrets....
I bought a book the author was selling & autographing at the Titanic Museum that was a reprint of survivor accounts right after the wreck. That told me there was a coal fire before the ship ever sailed. This book uncovers a fatal design flaw in the hull that made the boat break apart at a ten degree angle, causing the people who stayed down below waiting for a rescue ship because only a handful of crew & ship designer Thomas Andrews realized how bad things actually were 2 drown even faster.
Violet Jessup was a crew member on the Titanic who made it to a boat, she later told someone she wished she'd grabbed her toothbrush when she left the boat. She was a crew member on Britannic a couple of years later, she made it to a lifeboat with her toothbrush in her pocket. they had to abandon lifeboats & go into the sea, the lifeboats were getting pulled into the propellers.
you've gotta give this woman some major kudos, surviving one wreck & climbing onto another boat...maybe she had no other job options. maybe she just had no fear. or figured what were the odds of that ever happening again.