A Conversation With Author Of The Covert Buccaneer, S. Lucia Kanter St. Amour

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best arts and entertainment magazine UK“, Lawyer. Legacy disrupter. Mother. Feminist firestarter. We chatted with the author of The Covert Buccaneer, Lucia, who lives in San Francisco, ahead of her dual timeline, historical fiction novel release on October 13^th 2025.

You’ve written a dual-timeline novel that weaves together two strong, complex women: Teddy in the 19th century and Ellie in the present day. What first sparked the idea for The Covert Buccaneer?

It began with an inherited manuscript and diary entries—a dusty and spectacular family history that conveniently erased the women. I didn’t want to merely add the women back in with a gentle brushstroke; I wanted to research, reimagine, and represent them with agency, grit, and consequence. Teddy and Ellie were born from the silences in that manuscript. I wanted to braid their stories together to show how the struggles of women across time echo and overlap.

This wasn’t a youthful epiphany. It was a slow-burn reckoning that found me in my fifties—after years of courtrooms, caregiving, and closed-door negotiations. Coming upon the family diary and noticing the glaring omissions ignited a reckoning.

Teddy begins her story as a teenage diarist in the late 1800s. What drew you to that period of history—and to writing from the perspective of a young woman navigating grief, identity, and secrecy?

The late 1800s were a crucible for women: politically, socially, emotionally. We were on the cusp of suffrage, labor reform, and westward expansion, and yet the voices of the women who lived it remain faint. Writing from Teddy’s teenage perspective allowed me to explore raw emotion and emerging identity at a time when girls were expected to be silent, compliant, and ornamental (and fed a steady diet of propaganda). Her grief (and relative lack of supervision) from an early age gave her license to question everything—and I followed her lead.

Ellie’s storyline brings the reader into the life of a modern-day special needs parent and attorney. How did your own experiences inform Ellie’s voice and her challenges?

Ellie’s exhaustion, fire, and resilience are deeply personal. I’ve walked the tightrope of caregiving, career landmines, courtroom battles, and public advocacy while navigating the silent toll it all takes on one’s mind, body, and spirit. Ellie’s desperation and juggling act is familiar—the IEP meetings, the righteous fury, the feeling of helplessness and not knowing the strength within, the moments of collapse in locked bathrooms. Her voice comes from lived experience and a refusal to sanitise the reality of modern womanhood.

The title, The Covert Buccaneer, hints at secrets, rebellion, and maybe a dash of mischief. Without giving too much away—what does the word ‘buccaneer’ mean to you?

To me, a buccaneer is anyone who challenges unjust rules, especially when those rules are designed to exclude, hoard, control, and diminish others. We see a lot on social media these days about being bold and loudly “speaking your truth.” But so often power is quiet. The women in this novel bend expectations, rewrite scripts, and operate in the shadows because they must. They outsmart the men who have wielded control over their world to keep them small. And when the time comes for them to grip a megaphone instead of an invisibility cape, they are smart enough to recognise that moment, too.

The word “covert” suggests the subversive ways women have always navigated power. It’s rebellion dressed in petticoats and legal letterhead. A covert buccaneer is any woman who reclaims stolen space—on the page, in a boardroom, or in her own life. She doesn’t wait for permission. She takes the helm.

This novel blends literary fiction, historical intrigue, and contemporary social commentary. How did you balance the two timelines, and what was the biggest challenge in keeping them emotionally and thematically linked?

Authors of historical fiction take on a huge responsibility: to represent the characters and events faithfully through painstaking research, while crafting dialogue and compressing time into the scaffolding of a compelling narrative. In my opinion, it’s the most challenging and most rewarding sort of writing. Which tracks. After all, I’m an attorney with decades of experience faithfully and zealously representing others. I approached it like stitching a double helix—each thread had its own cellular composition, but they had to wind together with intention while also being plausibly structured and paced.

This wasn’t easy, especially given that Teddy’s timeline stretches fifty-two years and Ellie’s is confined to fourteen months. Teddy’s life is so sprawling and detailed with primary source material that I had to make tough editorial choices.

The biggest challenge? Faithfully capturing their character and story arcs in the allotted time. But mirroring themes and emotional arcs meaningfully was less challenging. In so many organic ways, Ellie is confronting today what Teddy wrestled with in a different form. And I often made that connective tissue subtle—a theme, a phrase, an heirloom, a bruise. In that way, The Covert Buccaneer offers little Easter eggs for the careful reader.

Ellie’s voice is sharp and witty, and Teddy’s is grounded and resilient. How did you develop and distinguish their narrative voices across time?

Teddy’s voice spoke to me from actual diary entries, which gave me license to be a little unpolished and intimate (and to ignore strict CMOS rules to preserve her authenticity). She’s living in a world that demands composure from women. She’s observant and brimming with unspoken opinions, which made her fun to write. Being covert with her true opinions and actions was necessary not just for outcomes, but for survival.

Ellie’s voice is restrained at first because she has been so beaten down in her personal and professional life. When the reader meets her, she’s desperate. But she lives in a time when she doesn’t have to be quite as covert as Teddy, and the reader takes her hand and watches her dry wit and fire emerge from what’s already inside her. When Ellie picks the lock the shackles holding her back, you feel the heat. Both voices were shaped by their constraints—and how they push against them.

You have a background in law, mediation, and human rights. How do those experiences shape the way you write fiction—and the kinds of stories you’re drawn to tell?

They make me allergic to injustice, and endlessly curious about the unseen power dynamics in every room. Law teaches how the world is structured (and let’s remember how many laws were written by and for White men). Mediation teaches how people try (and often fail) to be heard. Human rights work teaches how systems erase the vulnerable—and those who threaten the spoils long protected by those who wrote the laws. All of that shows up in my fiction—as tension, stakes, and choices.

I’m drawn to stories where the personal is political and no one is entirely safe from the consequences of silence. The novel is the byproduct of listening—really listening—to women’s stories: the erased, the overlooked, the barely whispered. It’s also the freedom to finish the story, not just file the report.

The novel explores themes of womanhood, neurodiversity, family legacy, and power. Which of those themes felt most urgent for you as you were writing, and why?

Legacy. Because it’s often an invisible inheritance—passed down in silences, gestures, expectations. I was acutely aware of what gets buried in family lore and national history alike. Ellie had heard tales only of the sensational, swashbuckling George (for whom the rules were written, mind you). She hadn’t heard about Teddy. Why? She’s about to find out.

But also neurodiversity. I was asked by a US-based PR team to remove the bit about Leone from chapter three because they deemed it to be insensitive. But neurodivergent Leone in the year 1867 (and attitudes toward him) was real, and that passage is preserved directly from the primary source diary. Juxtaposed to the Luca character, I wanted to show how—as much progress as we’ve made since Teddy’s days—neurodiversity is still a puzzle, especially when it comes to caregiving.

I also wanted to illuminate the emotional toll of that journey without falling into stereotypes or romanticized heroism of caregivers. At this stage of life, I don’t soften the edges. I say what needs to be said. Outrage and joy both belong in the same story.

The blurb makes it sound like fans of Yellowstone, particularly the 1883 prequel, might be interested in this ‘Great American Women’s Novel’ – would you agree? What other TV shows would work as comparisons to The Covert Buccaneer?

Absolutely. 1883 fans will connect with Teddy’s gritty, high-stakes, frontier survival. She’s what Elsa might’ve become had she (survived and) traded her rifle in Montana for a pickaxe in Alaska. And Yellowstone lovers will recognise the tension between land, power, legacy, and the quiet ways nature is a character of its own.

Also shows like Bloodline (for its layered timelines and familial secrets), Maid (maternal grit and caregiving justice), and Little Fires Everywhere (for its sharp elbows and moral ambiguity). Think Unbelievable meets The Good Fight—where truth isn’t easy, systems are flawed, and women fight like hell anyway.

In the category of Women Who Outsmart the Men Who Try to Squash Them? Fans of the Lessons in Chemistry limited series, take note: some women rewrite the rules; others burn the playbook. Through Ellie and Teddy, readers get both redemption and retribution—two flavours of justice served on a monogrammed Palace Hotel cocktail napkin..

And while Disclaimer plays out in London, The Covert Buccaneer offers a similar emotional excavation on American soil, with women who face their fate instead of swallowing silence to keep others comfortable.

If a reader closes the final page of The Covert Buccaneer and sits with it for a moment, what do you hope stays with them most?

First: all the feels.

Second: that silence has a lineage, and so does defiance. I hope they start looking for the names that were never carved into buildings but built the foundation.

Third: that justice isn’t always loud or visible, and progress isn’t linear. That telling a more complete story matters. I want women to remember that their inherent power hasn’t faded, though it can be made to recede temporarily and lie in wait. And I hope some part of them burns to pick up a torch—even if just to light the next reader’s path.

And then I hope they re-read it to find any Easter eggs they missed, share it, and gossip about Teddy and Ellie with friends.

Find more from S. Lucia Kanter St. Amour now:

Apple Audiobook: https://apple.co/3KKZ0zI

Apple Books: https://apple.co/3KKZ0zI

Kindle: https://amzn.to/4nmxerO

Paperback: https://amzn.to/4pJ9yQd

Hardcover: https://amzn.to/3Ir2eb8

Audible: https://amzn.to/4pKW9H4