SYNOPSIS:

AVALINE Written by Donna Dimmery Keese Genre: Fantasy / Historical Drama / Coming-of-Age Sixteen-year-old Avaline Winslow has carried guilt since the day she survived a river accident that took the life of her best friend, Alex. Haunted and withdrawn, she buries herself in art and in her fascination with the Titanic—the ship her great-great-grandmother Margaret miraculously survived. On her twelfth birthday, Avaline’s grandmother gives her a delicate star-shaped pendant said to have guided the women in their family “when the world loses its compass.” Five years later, on the centennial of Titanic’s maiden voyage, Avaline makes a wish upon her star pendant, beneath the North Star: if she could save just one soul who never got the chance, it would be Nora Callahan, a seventeen-year-old Irish musician who perished on the ship. That night, the pendant glows—and Avaline awakens in 1912 aboard the RMS Titanic. At first, she’s dazzled, then terrified by the realization that history is about to repeat itself. Avaline befriends Nora, a fiery dreamer bound for America, and resolves to change her fate. Her warnings to officers are dismissed as hysteria, and she’s imprisoned after confronting ship designer Thomas Andrews and owner J. Bruce Ismay. With the help of Seamus O’Connor, a kind young crewman, Avaline escapes her cell as the iceberg strikes. Together they unlock steerage gates and guide families toward the lifeboats, opening paths that were once sealed by history. As the great ship breaks apart, Avaline gives her pendant to Nora—urging her to live, sing, and remember. Nora and Seamus reach safety, while Avaline is pulled under with the ship, her last sight the light of the North Star above. In 2012, Avaline’s sister Jules searches for answers and watches Titanic’s online passenger lists shift in real time—casualty numbers falling, new survivors appearing, Nora’s name among them. Moments after the sinking’s recorded hour, Avaline reappears at home, drenched and breathing, the century between them collapsed. The day after, on her seventeenth birthday, a package arrives: a letter from Nora, written decades earlier, filled with photographs of the life Avaline made possible. Inside is the returned Star pendant—the same light carried through generations of women who found courage in darkness. Avaline is a sweeping, time-bending coming-of-age drama about grief, destiny, and the power of one life to change countless others. It bridges two centuries and asks: What if survival isn’t about being chosen—but about choosing to live?

AVALINE