Erin Blakemore - The Heroine's Bookshelf - Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

• Leslie Burke in Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson

• Gemma Doyle in A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray

• Sara Crewe in A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

In 1863 Louisa May Alcott, bedridden with typhoid after her ill-fated stint as a Civil War nurse, had a strange hallucination. She lay in her bed, sweating and moaning, trying and failing to look away from the dark Spaniard who claimed to be her husband, a man who hid behind curtains and closet doors and took her by surprise again and again. She cried out in agony; he responded with a terrifying “Lie still, my dear.”

One hundred and forty-six years later, I lay in my own bed, stricken with my third case of bronchitis in a year. I was nearing the end of the writing process on the book you have just read. Appropriately, through my codeine- and cough-syrup-induced haze, I hallucinated about Louisa herself, imagining her standing in my doorway, her hair trailing down her back like Jo March. But Louisa didn’t tell me to lie still. Instead, she admonished me: “Get back to work.”

Tired but driven, goaded by a deadline Louisa would have appreciated and a frantic desire to type “The End,” I finished the book at last. As I turned off the computer, exhausted, I had another vision, this one uncomfortable but somehow empowering. “My” authors stood in a long row next to their heroines, looking at me in silence across the emptiness of many years. They seemed to want something. Had I met their expectations?

Healthy once more, I’m inclined to conclude that the women of the past don’t so much expect something of me as ask me to acknowledge what they have given me. As time weathers the pages of history books, writers like Jane Austen and Zora Neale Hurston move ever further from our grasp. All that’s left of these women is what they chose—what they dared—to leave us. In a way, they’ve burdened us with an extraordinary task: to bring our own life experiences and interpretations to the reading of their lives, their heroines; to keep their legacies alive long after their deaths. To me, the power of these authors lies not just in the books they wrote, but in the lives they led, lives that somehow manage to puncture the distance of continents and centuries.

This realization—this appreciation of the lives of my literary heroines—has been uneasily mirrored in my own writing process, which has challenged my expectations, assumptions, and limits along the way. During the course of writing this book, my own life was disrupted, first by illness and daily woes, then by the death of my beloved grandfather Gerald Kendall Alexander. As I watched my family struggle with an irreplaceable loss, I was reminded of my life’s own heroines. I saw my mother, sister, aunts, cousins, and grandmother confront their loss with purpose, self, and dignity… qualities that mirror the literary heroines who have done so much to shape me.

As I reflect on lives so heroically lived, I’m reminded that it’s a bit too easy to watch a beloved book slip out of print, to forget someone who can never be replaced. By passing on the legacies of the people we love—heroines and relatives and selves alike—we acknowledge their worth and their influence. We’re the ones tasked with the survival, the recognition, of the people and things we love. We can lie still, or we can consult our bookshelf and get back to a heroine’s work.

Back in headier teenage days, I made a bold pact. I’d dedicate my first book to my friend Richard, and he’d take me to the Oscars when he became a world-renowned director. Years and careers later, I haven’t forgotten my promise. First and foremost, this book is dedicated to my surrogate brother and my best friend—not just because I promised, but because of everything he’s meant to me over the last twenty-two years.

The book you’ve just read simply wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the patience and endless confidence of my agent, Larry Weissman, and book-obsessed Sascha Alper. I owe them, my editor, Jeanette Perez, copy editor Miranda Ottewell, and everyone at HarperCollins a real debt of gratitude. Thanks also to my beta readers Kyla, Stephanie, Courtney, and Wendy for their invaluable feedback on the first draft of the book.

I’m not sure who I’d be without Kyla, Kathryn, Juli, Scott, Kj, Nicole, Carol, Olivia, and especially Mike, who have been nothing less than heroic in their unwavering support of me and my writing, as have the countless mentors, friends, and family members who encouraged me every step of the way.