Alicia's Secret

Meet three remarkable women who excelled in times when men dominated everything. Alicia, a young American girl in England, visits an old churchyard and evokes Elvira, a sprightly, mischievous young ghost who in turn introduces her to three women from three critical moments in history, when each triumphed in a male-dominated society. Considered the greatest English queen, Matilda of Flanders came from Normandy with William the Conqueror as the key strategist for the Conquest as well as his guiding light in the politics and culture of her era. Sofonisba Anguissola was an accomplished Renaissance artist who studied with Michelangelo and became his protégé and collaborator, and Lucie Dillon, once a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette at Versailles, barely escaped the Terror and the dreaded guillotine to farm in the new United States for a time before returning to France to advise and aid Napoleon. In their own words, these ghostly women describe their widely different lives and loves, and the three periods in which they lived—the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution.