William S. Roberts writes stories set in earlier times. He sticks close to things that actually happened. He also uses real people, people who lived long ago. His aim is to keep the characters from feeling like neat tags on a page. He does not write from memory by itself. He looks things up and verifies small points. After that, he forms the scenes in his head. In the end, you can feel what each person wanted. You can also see what blocked them. And you can notice what scared them.