The past is a foreign country, as L.P. Hartley famously observed in THE GO BETWEEN. But unlike other exotic destinations, it’s one you don’t have to leave home to visit. All you need is the right kind of passport: historical fiction...

The ability to transport the reader through time as well as place is one of the reasons the genre has always enthralled me, and now --- being married to historical novelist Tasha Alexander --- I’m doubly fortunate: Not only do I love reading her finished books, but I get to watch them being created. It’s fascinating to see a bygone era being reconstructed before my eyes --- with its delicate tapestry of distinctive clothes, food, technology, vocabulary, class distinctions and social conventions --- but that’s only half the story, because the driving force of any novel is really its protagonist. In Tasha’s case, of course, that’s the wonderful Lady Emily. And that begs the question: Living in the present-past with Tasha-Emily, how much are these two captivating ladies alike?