Haunted


 * "What if you could make your future a part of your past?"
 * —The promotion for Haunted

Haunted is a young adult historical romance novel written by Christine Lange. It is the first book in the Timekeeper Saga, followed by Golden Girl and Angel Wings. 

In the novel, a 17-year-old girl named Chloe Dixon falls in love with an Irish immigrant named Jack Flynn on the RMS Titanic shortly after traveling back in time to the year 1912. The novel is told from Chloe's perspective, even though it focuses primarily on her and Jack in both the 20th and 21st centuries.

Characters

 * Chloe Dixon — A seventeen year old girl whose mother is disconnected with her affluent grandparents. With the death of her mother, Chloe goes to live with them in Rochester, New York and enters a whole new world after accidentally traveling back in time. She has wavy dark red hair, bright blue eyes, pale skin, and high cheekbones.


 * Jack Flynn — A young, Irish-Catholic immigrant from Belfast, Ireland. He is an aspiring artist going to America on the RMS Titanic in search of a better life. He falls in love with Chloe after saving her life from an attempted suicide. Jack is characterized by a likable personality and he is fiercely loyal to the people he loves most. He has brown hair and dark green eyes, unlike some parts of Northern Ireland where people have lighter eyes.
 * Lily Dodds — The best friend of Chloe, she met Chloe when they were both in kindergarten shortly after the Dodds family had emigrated to New York from London. Lily isn't wealthy as Chloe is, but attends Bridgeton Preparatory School through a foreign exchange student program.
 * Walter Dixon — He is Chloe's grandfather and was the current patriarch of the Dixon family until his death on Chloe's eighteenth birthday. His mother, Evelyn, was a combat nurse for the U.S. Navy who served during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Like most of the Dixon family, he looks very much like his father with the exception of having his mother's eyes.
 * Emily Dixon — She is Chloe's grandmother and the matriarch of the Dixon family until her death in February 2013. Emily was the only woman who married into the Dixon family to come from a non-wealthy family, which is probably the reason that she never got along with her daughter, Marie.
 * Marie Dixon — Chloe's late mother. When she was alive, Marie was a fashion designer in Los Angeles, California, where she owned her own fashion studio. Sadly, Marie died in a car accident after dropping Chloe off at her high school on her way to work. Upon her death, she requested in her will that her legal guardians were her grandparents and ex-husband. Marie also bequeathed several material possessions, which included clothing, jewelry, and her sketchbooks that had her designs in them.
 * James McKay — He is Chloe's father. Like his daughter, James was a virtuoso pianist and a novice ballet dancer while he attended Juilliard. He was a prominent figure in his daughter's childhood, encouraging her to get good grades and follow whatever made her happy. When Chloe's grandparents were murdered, James stepped in to take care of her until she was ready to move into only daughter until she was ready to move into an apartment with Jack in Greenwich Village.
 * Ms. King — She is the head housemaid at Dixon Mansion. She has the appearance of a slightly older woman who wears a classic style reminiscent of Jacqueline Onasis-Kennedy.
 * Mary Lawrence — She is the senior housemaid at Dixon Mansion and is currently a lady's maid to Chloe Dixon.
 * Kate Dalton— She is the junior housemaid at Dixon Mansion. Kate is a young woman in her late twenties with wavy blonde hair and brown eyes.
 * Edward Gruel — He was Chloe's hot tempered fiance and the antagonist of the novel. Despite his handsome features, Edward was a cruel and abusive man who often teased Chloe and Louise for liking art, reading, listening to music, or having their own thoughts.
 * Louise Seymour — She was Chloe's great-great aunt and was the first heiress of the Dixon family. A fashionable young woman, Louise showed a strained relationship with her husband, Ralph Seymour. After his tragic death, Louise ran away from home and took up a position as a medic for the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War 1, recording everything she saw in her diary as she suffered unimaginable trauma and developed shell-shock syndrome, otherwise known as PTSD. Louise died in December of 1918 from Spanish influenza and was given a proper funeral with full military honors.
 * Ralph Seymour — Louise's late husband and a prominent stockbroker on Wall Street. Unfortunately, Ralph perished on the RMS Titanic, where he drowned after falling overboard when the ship tilted before breaking in half. When he died, Louise never got over his death and developed mental health issues the rest of her life.
 * Allan Dixon — The matriarch of the Dixon family during the early 20th century. He was a prominent businessman from Ireland who was highly regarded in New York society; but the current family viewed him with disgust after realizing he had made unethical business decisions when dealing with matters of the prestigious Astor family.
 * Cornelia Dixon — Allan's American wife and the mother of Louise Seymour and Marjorie Dixon. After her eldest daughter, Louise, came home without her husband; Cornelia tried to convince Allan to let Louise grieve, but Allan refused and secretly made arrangements to disown her and stole her inheritance money. The shock that Louise had been financially cut off, caused her to enter a crippling depression that she never recovered from. Cornelia died in November 1914, three months after World War 1 started in Europe.
 * Tommy O'Hara — A twenty-year old immigrant from Belfast, Ireland. They are both longtime friends at the start of the novel. Later on, Tommy ends up befriending Chloe Dixon and enters in a relationship with a French passenger, Cosette DuBois.
 * Cosette DuBois — A young French woman traveling with her parents to seek a better life in Quebec, Canada. Unfortunately, the DuBois family never made it to Quebec as Cosette was killed by the ship's propellers when one of them broke off after her hand slipped and her parents died from hypothermia.
 * Stephen McCann — A young Irishman whose dreams lay in being a leader of the labor class. He was killed by the water that floods to the D Deck as the bow started to sink.
 * Ian Johnston — A young ship-worker from Donegal, Ireland, who hoped to get a steady construction job in New York City. Unfortunately, like Stephen, Ian drowned in the icy water that flooded the area at the foot of the Grand Staircase.
 * Woodrow McFadden — Edward Gruel's manservant.
 * Anastasia Pavlova — The wife of a Russian diplomat, Dmitri Pavlov, she was a first-class passenger on the RMS Titanic.
 * Captain Edward J. Smith  — an English naval officer who served as commanding officer of numerous White Star Line vessels. He is best known as the captain of the RMS Titanic.
 * 1st Officer William Murdoch — A Scottish sailor and the First Officer of the RMS Titanic.
 * 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller — the Second Officer of the RMS Titanic.
 * 3rd Officer Herbert Pittman — the Third Officer of the RMS Titanic.
 * 4th Officer Joseph Boxhall — the Fourth Officer of the RMS Titanic, and later served as a naval officer in World War I.
 * 5th Officer Harold Lowe — the Fifth Officer of the RMS Titanic. He was the only one that went back to save any survivors from the shipwreck.
 * 6th Officer James Moody — the Sixth Officer of the RMS Titanic and the only junior officer of the ship to die in the disaster.

Plot Summary
Chloe Dixon moves from Venice Beach, California to Rochester, New York to live with her grandparents, after her mother dies in a horrific car accident. Even though Chloe never had many friends in Venice Beach, she quickly attracts attention as the new student at her school and is befriended by many of the students at the school. Unfortunately for her, she does not want the fame and attention her last name has with a school as prestigious as Bridgeton Preparatory School as every patriarch, heir, and heiress has attended the school since it opened in 1801.

When Chloe is bored one day in the beginning of November after a snow day prompts an early release from school, she decides to explore the family attic on her own just to entertain herself. Unfortunately, she discovers a hidden world the family has hidden away for housecleaning reasons. While she is looking at a collection of snuff boxes, there is a corner of the attic that attracts her attention and feeling the need to fuel her excessive curiosity, she goes in there and feels the need to investigate the entire area, which only leads her to wonder why her mother never told her about the attic. After glancing over vintage jewelry owned by one of the family's daughters, Chloe spots a leather bound diary on the floor and flips through it to find a silver skeleton key inside. Upon picking it up to get a closer look at it, the key starts to vibrate and projects a sound that is reminiscent of a ship's foghorn, which scares her so much, she nearly falls over in the process. However, her ears begin to ring when her hand comes in contact with the diary, making it hard for her to focus. Soon enough, she finds herself gravitating towards the noise like a moth is attracted to a flame. However, none of the servants or her grandparents are aware what Chloe is doing, and she finds herself falling through empty space and blacks out from the whole experience.

During this strange experience, Chloe felt like she was being pulled from multiple directions and felt uncomfortable the whole time. When she wakes up in the middle of a vacant street in Southampton, England, Chloe tries to figure out how she ended up arriving at her destination. She is relieved when she sees a crowd of people walking by on the street and follows after them. It isn't until she discovers how difficult it is to catch up with the crowd does she realize that her regular clothes have been replaced by a walking suit, lace-up boots, and a gigantic hat covered in thick ostrich feathers and giant satin bows. When she finally finds an opening in the crowd to catch her breath, Chloe is dumbfounded when she sees a black-and-gold Renault pull up, only to have her jaw drop when she sees a beautiful young woman emerge from the car and realizes it is Louise Seymour, her great-aunt and the first known heiress of the Dixon family. After meeting Allan Dixon, she quickly befriends the other people, introducing herself as Chloe McKay to conceal her true identity. She quickly befriends Louise and helps her settle into her stateroom she is sharing with her husband, Ralph Seymour, who comes back after taking a casual stroll on the upper decks with a man named Edward Gruel, whom Ralph reveals as his protege. Chloe is happily introduced to Edward by Ralph, whom automatically has feelings for Chloe and cordially invites her to eat lunch with him the following afternoon, to which Chloe accepts the invitation.

Chloe's first date with Edward ends total disaster and she regrets ever agreeing to the invitation in the first place. However, she is distracted by the sight of a young man of about eighteen picking up food scraps from plates. Feeling sorry for the boy, Chloe gets up from the table and walks over to him, giving her the second half of a tuna melt sandwich. The boy is grateful for the kind gesture and darts off before Edward can walk over to them. Once the boy is out of sight, Edward grabs Chloe rather firmly by the arm, explaining that it is bad form to show kindness to people who have a lower socioeconomic status, which makes her develop strong feelings of resentment for Edward for the remainder of the day. When she and Louise meets up with Edward and Ralph for dinner that night, it isn't until everyone is halfway through eating their meal that Edward reveals that he wants to marry Chloe, which shocks everyone at the table and it unintentionally makes Chloe run out of the room crying. Shortly afterwards, Chloe decides that the only way to get away from this strange adventure is to jump off of the Titanic and end her life.

However, her plans are thwarted by the young man she saw earlier and when she asks him to come closer to her, Chloe realizes this is the same boy whom she saw walking alone on the beach several hours before her mother was killed on the morning of September 20, 2012. However, the boy takes pity on Chloe and successfully manages to coax her back over the railing. Shortly after words, Chloe reveals her true identity as being Chloe Dixon, which prompts the boy to introduce himself as Jack Flynn.

Throughout the rest of the novel, Jack and Chloe's relationship grows during the maiden voyage and they fall passionately in love with each other. However, society dictates they should not simply be together because of their social class. However, despite this, they find a way  to be together and realize they are compatible with one another. Although she admits this at several points in the novel, she prefers Jack as a romantic partner simply because Jack treats her with kindness and respect while Edward sees her as someone fragile who cannot make her own decisions.

The seemingly perfect state of their relationship is thrown into chaos when the Titanic strikes an iceberg and Chloe makes the decision to go with Jack to warn Louise and the others about the impending disaster. The plan to get everyone to safety is thwarted by Edward, who wildly accuses Jack of stealing Chloe's necklace after noticing it was missing from her neck. Not long after Edward alerts the Master-at-Arms, Jack is arrested and dragged out of the stateroom and taken down towards E Deck, which has already started to fill up with water. Upon confronting Edward shortly after Jack's arrest, Chloe discovers that Jack had been right in saying the necklace was planted before they arrived at Louise's stateroom. Sensing that she and Edward need to settle this argument somewhere else, they go across the hallway to her stateroom. After walking inside, Edward becomes enraged and unleashes all of his anger at her, even going so far as becoming physically abusive. When this happens, Chloe breaks off the engagement and leaves. Once outside her room, she locks the door and quickly tells Louise to get Ralph and her parents off the ship before it's too late. Louise obliges and quickly hugs her goodbye before leaving the first-class hallway.

Before going off to rescue Jack, Chloe disposes of her engagement ring by putting it in a teacup, only to smash it with her shoe seconds after putting the ring in it. She leaves the room without writing a note, hoping Edward will understand the gesture enough to move on from their broken relationship. Feeling determined, Chloe makes her way down towards E Deck. While she is busy rescuing Jack, Edward escapes from the locked stateroom and is devastated when he finds her engagement ring mixed in with the broken teacup shards. With vengeance clouding his mind, he vows to kill Jack and Chloe both by grabbing a revolver he initially packed when boarding the ship, and hides it in his overcoat before following Chloe's trail. He later reunites with Chloe when he sees she's being lowered into one of the lifeboats. Using his impeccable lying skills, Edward manages to convince Chloe that she shouldn't worry about Jack as he has made arrangements to go into the next boat after her, but this is a lie set up by Edward convincing Chloe to let her guard down. To his and Jack's surprise, she risks her own life trying to get back onto the ship by jumping into a nearby window. Jack, worried for Chloe's safety, rushes to another part of the ship to see if she made it. He is relieved when they reunite at the foot of the Grand Staircase and kiss passionately. When Edward sees them so happy, he jumps out from behind a beam on the top balcony and starts shooting at them. This begins a game of cat and mouse through the ship's interior until they are cornered in the first-class dining hall. Knowing that Edward is close behind them, Jack urges Chloe to hide under a table while he deals with Edward. During their conversation, Chloe overhears that Edward has always considered Jack an obstacle from the moment he met Chloe and wants him dead. Feeling the need to keep Edward distracted as long as possible, Jack revealed the reason Chloe didn't love Edward was because he was a cruel person. Edward, amused by this statement, admits his father was a cruel person and not him. When he asks Jack what made him think that he is cruel, Jack blames Edward for the death of his parents and siblings. In a fit of rage, Jack lunges at Edward's throat and demands that he confess to being part of the murders of his family members, which he does.

Chloe, meanwhile, persuaded Jack to show mercy on him. Begrudgingly, Jack agreed to this method and is almost killed by Edward. Chloe instinctively grabbed a butter knife and tackles him to the ground, stabbing him in the stomach. Satisfied saving herself and Jack, the two of them leave Edward's body in the dining hall before the water floods the area. Once they are out of the dinning hall, they try to get to the promenade deck, but almost all of them are used up. They manage to survive the ship splitting in half before nearly drowning in the frigid ocean water. While swimming towards an object they can both climb on, Chloe nearly dies after an unknown male passenger tried drowning her. Knocking him out in one punch, Jack and Chloe swim to a large wooden door, letting Jack go first because he is heavier and taller than her. Jack lifts her from the water and they wait to be rescued. To keep both of them alive, Chloe shoves her body against Jack's to preserve their body heat. They are rescued by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe after some time and are brought to the SS Carpathia along with other survivors. Once the Carpathia docks in New York Harbor the following week, Chloe and Jack head off to Central Park to say goodbye to each other. Before she leaves, Jack gives her his mother's silver locket as a present. Upon opening it, she finds the picture they took a few days before the ship sank and is overjoyed that she has something to look at when they are not together. Grateful for the gift, Chloe tearfully kisses him goodbye and returns to the present day, where she accidentally runs into Ms. King and tells her everything about her amazing adventure going back in time and being a passenger on the RMS Titanic.

After surviving her first semester at Bridgeton Preparatory School, Chloe is greeted with a surprise visit from her father, James McKay, at her grandparent's Christmas party over winter break. When they go upstairs to have a private conversation, James reveals to Chloe that he's heard rumors that Chloe's mother, Marie, might be alive after news came out a few weeks ago when a groundskeeper discovered her body had been exhumed for unknown reasons. The book ends with Chloe asking her father if he believes the rumors, but she herself if left wondering if her mother has been alive the entire time.

Cover
The seascape on the cover of Haunted represents the connection between the past and the present.  

Christine Lange was first inspired by the scenery described in the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe during her sophomore year in high school, but did not want it to be her initial cover for the novel. After seeing the movie Titanic for the very first time several months later, she wanted a picture of a starry night sky loosely modeled after the one Rose Dewitt-Bukater looks up at in the end of the film. However, nobody really cared for it and some of Lange's friends suggested she design her own cover instead.

She eventually settled on an image of a cloudy shoreline with waves crashing against a cluster of rocks.

Trivia

 * Christine Lange has said that she came up with the idea for the book after she watched the film Titanic, which is also a story about two lovers named Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt-Bukater who falls in love on the doomed ocean liner. The time-travelling aspect is the only thing that separates her work from that of the movie.
 * Lange edited over 70% of her manuscript directly over her original draft. This includes changing several character names, expanding backstories for important characters, trimming down some chapters with lengthy exposition, and even getting rid of characters that were unnecessary.
 * After changing some of the character names, Lange also changed the nationalities of her new protagonists too. Although it was easy to put Chloe as an American, Jack's nationality went through at six changes before she finally settled on him being from Northern Ireland. The idea that Jack should sound more educated came after studying how Jamie Fraser spoke to other characters in the historical, multi-genre novel Outlander.
 * The ship's sinking timeline closely models the same one found at the beginning of Walter Lord's novel, A Night to Remember; but Christine Lange added some of her novel's events, such as Chloe's escape from the stateroom to rescue Jack from E Deck towards the end of the novel, to make her timeline more unique.
 * At the time it was initially written, the ship celebrated the 100th anniversary of the sinking.
 * While researching the historical parts of the novel, Christine Lange spent four years researching everything about the famous ship, passengers, era-appropriate fashion, entertainment, and current events common in the early twentieth century. She also read articles regarding thermal inversion, water pressure and temperature, and even asking how to keep two people on top of a wooden door without sinking into near-freezing water.
 * Most of the names that Lange came up for her fictional characters were a combination of different books, movies, or TV shows. The characters that were not fictional were likely real passengers on the ship.
 * The book has been published as of July 2019.