I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. —RUDYARD KIPLING, THE COLLECTED WORKS

When I was growing up my father hung a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “IF” on a wall in our living room. I knew he put it there for my brothers, but I liked it anyway and I’ve had a fondness for Kipling ever since. So, when I ran across the above quote, I knew I wanted to use it as the epigraph for I WAS ANASTASIA. History is just a story, after all, but so many people seem to forget that. They find it dry and uninteresting, a litany of dates and times, facts and figures. My goal, with every novel, is to make history come alive, and therefore I must make it very, very human. Love. Loss. Triumph. Tragedy. Heartbreak. Heroism. I want to show the full range of human experience within whatever particular moment in history I have chosen to write about. I want my readers to care about the people involved. And there’s no better way to do that, than to tell a really good story.