The process of reconstructing the past is fascinating, and that’s why I want to spend time working through its complexities and writing history myself. But if I honestly recall what drew me to reading about the past in the first place, it is fiction. Specifically, children’s historical fiction presented as the diaries of girls my age, living through various periods in Canadian and world history.

I became preoccupied not only with the unaccustomed sense of freedom but also with the paralysing horror that had come over me at various times when confronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past… --W.G. Sebald

Two years ago, I was halfway through earning a degree in history, learning about the kinds of stories people tell in their historical scholarship. I was learning how to write well, and how…