“That I get to put [Markham] back in her rightful place in history seems to be an incredible privilege,” McLain told me. “And what an intimate act to connect through time and space with her story, and to illuminate parts of her history, and shine a light on her life, which really demands another look.”

McLain is hoping her novel can change the way we remember her heroine. Perhaps fiction, in general, can change the place women have in history. And in recent months, McLain is not the only author taking the gamble that it will. In 2015 alone, several authors have researched the narratives of real, historical women, spinning their lives into novels and short-story collections. And they’re selling, too: an initial print run of 150,000 copies for Circling the Sun shows its publisher anticipates that Markham’s story will be another smash hit.

Markham was also fictionalized in Megan Mayhew Bergman’s collection Almost Famous Women (Scribner) earlier this year. Bergman’s 13 gutsy short stories portray women whose lives left them on the fringes of history’s conversations—James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia; Norma, sister to Edna St. Vincent Millay—but who don’t necessarily deserve to go down anonymously. “I wanted to talk about these women,” Bergman wrote in her author’s note at the collection’s conclusion, although she cautioned, “the world has not always been kind to its unusual women.” Through Bergman’s exquisite writing, we dwell briefly in multiple lives that history was unkindly content to lose—but Bergman wasn’t.

This kind of female-first thinking is what allows these tales to soar—and that it’s happening now isn’t a coincidence. Women are leaning in, sure, but it’s more than that; as a feminist revolution for women’s equality, as revved as anything since the 1960s, gains more momentum daily, books are echoing the charge. In 2015, the women’s landscape looks increasingly verdant: Hillary Clinton’s viability as a presidential candidate is a given, and her gender almost hasn’t been a factor; as the (first female) chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel’s power in the European economy is unrivaled; and in the U.S. military, women will finally be allowed to the front lines of combat as soon as next year. Even Taylor Swift is now comfortable with calling herself a feminist. People are looking toward their literature to provide the same energy.