Finally, though it is dark, I see. I see the clock. The train. And I understand. I need not change any act. For I am the train. I am traveling faster than the speed of light, and the hands of the clock are rolling backward. I see my Lieserl.
This quote comes from the Prologue and Epilogue, ostensibly reflecting Mileva’s final moments, and it operates almost like a question and an answer. While it is written more as an imaginative link between the physics theories upon which Mileva worked, the arc of her life and her final moments rather than a scientific reflection and observation, it is also a broad brush description of how I see my writing and my novels. I almost operate like an archaeologist, sifting through the detritus of the past to find these important women, and I roll backwards through time as I gather and assemble the evidence of their lives to create a cohesive narrative about who they were and what they mean to us in the present, bringing their time forward, if you will. If I do my job right, then I hope readers can see the legacy of these past women reverberating in our modern lives—whether it is Mileva from THE OTHER EINSTEIN or Agatha from THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE or any of the women in between and those to come.
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