Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale

This is the empowering story of Dashti, mucker-turned-ladies' maid, who agrees to be locked in a tower with her mistress for seven years. She is mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and morally strong, and is a great example for youth readers.

"I held her and sang to her and let our dinner burn on the fire..." I'm too practical for that, because my mother was. But there are a lot of women in this world whom I admire who would let dinner burn before leaving a grieving daughter to tend to the dinner.

Dashti has a cat for awhile, and one night is writing with him on her lap. She says "His purring shakes my lap but steadies my hand."

This is not a spoiler because it says on the title page that the book includes the tale of their adventure after the tower. She has been locked up with no windows for so long - Dashti gets out on a clear night and says "I was under the stars, like a fish is under water." Surrounded and swimming in the beauty of the sky.

"I can't say which is more terrible, to be locked away from everyone or to be free in a world where all are dead. Both are different shades of darkness."

"I didn't know when Shria would appear, so I stayed startled and alert all day. It reminded me of summers as a child before my brothers left, when your family set up our gher [house] in the summer pastures and there were loads of children around. The Hunt, we'd play, some of us being animals hiding in the tall grass, the others searching us out with small bows and blunt arrows. How my heart would pound! I waited, crouched, prayed to Carthen, goddess of strength, and wanted to cry for the thrill oand the terror. That's how I felt today."

"Windows are the eyes of the Ancestors. Windows are better than food!"

"These past days, it seems I could scarcely draw breath for feeling so gray, and then today . . . well, the change makes me think about the sky over the steppes, cloudy one moment and Eternal Blu Sky the next. There's never a day that we don't see some blue sky. That's the way with a mucker's emotions, too. My mama used to say, "Are you sad? Then just wait a minute.""

"There's nothing more aggravating in the world than the midnight sniffling of the person you've decided to hate."

(Spoiler alert:) "Giving [the cat] to Saren was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I felt emptied, a well dug out of my chest, and as pathetic as a three-legged cricket. But, strangely, as I rolled over to find sleep again, I realized that I didn't hate her anymore."