Why? Because I’m a history nut. I’ve always found history fascinating. There are those who contend history is nothing but dates that you have to memorize. They never had a good history teacher.

History is so much more than 1609, 1776, 1861, 1945. (Bonus points if you can tell me the significance of those dates!) It’s people – real people who lived real lives. They were people of courage, like the Pilgrims who crossed the ocean on a wooden ship to build a new life of religious freedom in a wild land besotted with danger.

It’s patriots, fighting a king an ocean apart, longing for freedom for themselves and for generations to come.

It’s President Lincoln, the poor boy from Kentucky, who taught himself law and rose from splitting wood to become one of our most beloved presidents.

It’s Thomas Edison, who imagined and created and changed life for all of us.

More than that, history is the countless people whose names and faces have long been forgotten, but whose contributions to the world touch us all today.

We shouldn’t forget those people. Gerard deJong who faced a firing squad because he resisted the Germans. Johan Fietsma, who rescued this badly injured man. Hiltje Fietsma, who treat his wounds, though she endangered herself in so doing.

Don’t forget the ethnic Germans who fled Eastern Europe as the Russian troops closed in on them, committing unspeakable crimes against humanity. Don’t forget the death marches of concentration camp victims and POWs. Don’t forget those who huddled in bomb shelters all over Europe, praying those very bombs that might kill them would end the war and bring them freedom once more.

That is what history is all about. It’s why I write historical fiction.

What do you like best about history?