Lucia’s Masks

“MacIntyre’s literary work of art – for that is truly what this novel is – projects the zeitgeist into the future. Through her characters’ struggles we see how the intentional destruction of compassion undermines morality. But her strong characters dig deep, and we are shown their path to a more human and meaningful life.” – Goodreads

Lucia’s Masks follows a group of six strangers who meet by chance while fleeing a barbaric and thought-controlling totalitarian regime. As they make their arduous journey to the North, where they hope they can be free of the ever-present Eye and establish a humane society, we learn their individual stories of brushes with death and despair in the brutal city. The six protagonists are Lucia, a defiant young potter and the group’s forager; the Outpacer, a jaded philanderer who hides his face in a monk’s cowl and is seeking to atone for a past crime; Bird Girl, a former sex trade worker who has risked her life to obtain books forbidden by the state; Candace, a domineering social facilitator who wants to found a community based on traditional Dutch values; Chandelier, an adolescent who grew up inside his family’s self-sustaining fortress where he absorbed the riches of his father’s library; and his companion and protector, 88-year-old Harry, who spent decades mapping the disintegrating ice of Antarctica, the place that became his outstanding passion.