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WHY I WROTE THIS NOVEL THE WAY I DID… 

This book was not originally my idea. Simon & Schuster asked me to rewrite the story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia who was one of the daughters of the Russian Czar and Czarina, Nicholas and Alexandra Romanoff. Anastasia was murdered along with the rest of her family during the Russian Revolution. This much is fact. But legends swirled in the aftermath of their deaths, claiming that Anastasia had survived. Women even came forward claiming to be Anastasia. (DNA tests in modern times have proven even the most convincing claims to be untrue.) The story has spawned many plays and movies. One of the most popular is the animated musical Anastasia from 1997.

My dilemma was how to approach this story. Since this was a series about fairytales I decided to take the position that—as in the tales about her—Anastasia had survived and was suffering from amnesia. But how to bring something fresh to it? The only way I could think of was to delve as deeply as I could into the emotions Anastasia would have experienced had she actually been alive to travel this dangerous and yet romantic path to rediscover who she really had been.

Publisher: 
Simon Pulse
ISBN-13: 9781416975304
Age: 12 and up

This is the legendary Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman playing the tragic princess in the 1956 movie ANASTASIA. Although no one has ever proven that the Russian Grand Duchess survived her murder along with the rest of her family, rumors that she was alive persisted for many years. My challenge was to bring something fresh to the story.