Wendy MacIntyre creates a fictional dystopian world so dark that her characters’ chances of survival look next to impossible.
When art-lover Lucia finds her most precious possession destroyed, she resolves finally to abandon The City. Along the way she gathers companions, including: the Outpacer, a former hedonist and philanderer now hiding his identity behind a monk’s cowl; Bird Girl, a troubled young woman constantly hunting for books that have escaped the regime’s destruction; and Candace, a dominant individual whose repeated attempts to seize control of the group create tension among the travellers while they search for an alternate reality.
Each has been contaminated by the world they have escaped and this imprinting threatens the survival of the group. As tensions increase and the failure of their quest seems imminent, they find a box holding six Greek tragedy masks. These masks, possessors of uncanny powers, are the keys to their future.
Lucia’s Masks
ISBN: 9781927068786 Categories: Fiction, Dystopian, Literary
About the Author
Wendy MacIntyre lives in Ottawa where she works as a freelance writer and editor. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland and has a Ph.D. in English Literature (University of Edinburgh). She has published scholarly essays and short fiction in journals in Canada, the United States, and Britain, including in the University of Windsor Review and the Malahat Review. Her novels are Mairi (Oolichan Books), The Applecross Spell (XYZ Publishing), and Apart (Groundwood Books), a young adult novel co-authored with award-winning Saskatchewan writer R.P. MacIntyre. Apart was named one of the 10 best picks for young adult fiction for 2007 by the Ontario Library Association and a 2008 Starred Selection Best Books for Kids and Teens by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre.
Publisher Note
Lucia’s Masks follows the journey of six strangers who meet by chance after fleeing the psychic defilement of a barbaric totalitarian state and travel North to where they can create a free and humane society. The novel interweaves their personal histories with their experience and encounters as they journey together. The principal voice belongs to Lucia; the group’s forager, an aspiring sculptress, who once cleaned office buildings for a living. Sickened by the moral decay and the dominant culture’s obsession with pornography, she has chosen to seek spiritual renewal and has chosen to remain a virgin. When she leaves the city, she takes with her a ball of clay and a copy of the death mask of John Keats.
Her companions in flight from the city are the Outpacer, a former extreme hedonist and philanderer, who now hides his face and identity behind a monk’s cowl; Bird Girl, a young woman constantly searching for books from the past because the libraries have been razed and all reading material is now proscribed; Chandler, a teen who was born and raised in the “Egg”, a self-contained domed fortress constructed by his father to insulate them from society; Candace, a former facilitator, whose self-regard and attempts to dominate the group creates continual agitation; and Harry, an 88-year-old survivor of the society that reviles the elderly and does nothing for them.
As the group progresses towards their fragile dream amid their own bickering and frailties, they encounter a theatre box with six masks with uncanny powers that profoundly changes the way they think and behave.