One reason I love reading historical fiction books is that, every once in a while, you get the magical feeling of a character stepping out of her time, reaching out across the pages to whisper her truths in your ear, and the amazing thing is that the two of you could be sisters. It’s like meeting someone at a party who has a completely different background than you but with whom you instantly connect and see eye-to-eye. Only in this case, it feels even more magical because the person with whom you have so much in common is actually a figment of some author’s imagination and you wonder, “How on Earth did she know?? How did she get what is going on in my head right at this moment?”