I read books and I know things: Review of Lucie Dumas by Katherine Mezzacappa

London, 1871: Lucie Dumas of Lyon has accepted a stipend from her former lover and his wife, on condition that she never returns to France; she will never see her young son again. As the money proves inadequate, Lucie turns to prostitution to live, joining the ranks of countless girls from continental Europe who'd come to London in the hope of work in domestic service.

Escaping a Covent Garden brothel for a Magdalen penitentiary, Lucie finds only another form of incarceration and thus descends to the streets, where she is picked up by the author Samuel Butler, who sets her up in her own establishment and visits her once a week for the next two decades. But for many years she does not even know his name.

Based on true events.

A Five Star Read

This book felt like quietly stepping into someone’s life and staying there for a while.

On the surface, everything seems calm and in order, but there’s a sadness underneath it all. Not in a dramatic way—more like something that’s always there, even in the middle of ordinary daily life.

I really liked the London setting. It isn’t glamorous or overdone—just rooms, routines, familiar streets—but that’s what made it feel so personal. You get the sense there’s a whole city outside of Lucie’s world, while her own life feels small and enclosed, which says a lot without needing to spell it out.

Lucie is very aware of her situation. She understands where she is in life, even if she can’t really change it, and that gives the story a steady, matter-of-fact tone. Monsieur brings a kind of order to her days, but also reminds you how narrow her life has become. Brigid and Alfred feel warmer somehow, more alive, but they only offer passing glimpses of something different.

What stayed with me most is that there’s no big dramatic turning point. Nothing suddenly changes. Instead, things seem to close in little by little. Her past and present start to blend together, and you begin to understand how she ended up here without there ever being one single moment that decided it.

And then there’s her son. That part really lingered with me. You never get clear answers, and the book doesn’t force them, but his absence is always there, quietly shaping everything around it.

* very quiet, almost intimate atmospher

* relationships feel a bit off-balance, in a realistic way

* more about what’s unsaid than what actually happens

My thoughts summed up in one posh sentence

A subtle, reflective historical novel that builds its impact slowly, and stays with you for the way it observes a life rather than explains it.

This book is available on

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Katherine Mezzacappa

Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but currently lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney (Histria) and The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight) under her own name, as well as four historical novels (2020-2023) with Zaffre, writing as Katie Hutton. She also has three contemporary novels with Romaunce Books, under the pen name Kate Zarrelli. The Maiden of Florence was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’Association Gold Crown award in 2025 and has also been published in Italian.

Katherine’s short fiction has been published in journals worldwide. She has in addition published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory. She has been awarded competitive residencies by the Irish Writers Centre, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators and (to come) the Latvian Writers House.

Katherine also works as a manuscript assessor and as a reader and judge for an international short story and novel competition. She has in the past been a management consultant, translator, museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member.

She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Irish Writers Union, Irish PEN / PEN na hÉireann and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for the Historical Novel Review. She is lead organiser for the Historical Novel Society 2026 Conference in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

Katherine has a first degree in History of Art from UEA, an M.Litt. in Eng. Lit. from Durham and a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church.

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