In a sense, TransAtlantic is about the increasing interconnectedness of human beings, especially during scenes like the first trans-Atlantic flight from the UK to New York, and the scene where Frederick Douglass realizes that he has a following in Ireland of all places. The word to remember in this novel is "uncanny." Are all the small connections merely coincidences? Or perhaps, there is some underlying force connecting all the characters to one another? Regardless, the progress of history is undeniable—humans use technology to bring themselves closer to one another, and there's no getting around that. Another way of saying that is that with modern technology, the planet has globalized its marketplace of ideas and beliefs.
Look for instance at Frederick Douglass's voyage to Ireland. A black man in the lowest point of racial oppression in America finds an audience for his work in Ireland of all places. But if you look closely, it's easy to see that Irish people would be the perfect audience for Douglass's abolitionist ideas, because Irish communities have seen some serious oppression, both in the UK and abroad. Then in the second era in the novel, the 1990's, we see the Good Friday agreement, as if the circulation of Douglass's ideas through the century helped to contextualize the Irish conflict and point toward an ultimate resolution.
Non-fictional tone is a nice reminder that although the stories are specific, the meaning is broad. In all ways, all the time, humans have been interconnected, and even though our opinions about history are typically linear, in real time, the effects of seemingly disconnected events were felt, across the globe.
