Lamplighter

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 Lamplighter is a fact-based-fictional novel about a young French woman in a same-gender romance during the French Revolution told through diary entries. The woman, a Parisian lamplighter, witnessed the Battle of Bastille and risked her life to help a stranger who would change her life. She met her life partner at university and relocated to Rome to study, narrowly escaping the Mount Vesuvius eruption in Naples. After the French and Italian troops clashed in Rome, they fled to watch the Battle of the Nile between Lord Nelson's English fleet and Bonaparte's French navy. The diaries recount their journey to Lesvos, Mediterranean sailing, and meeting a polite Spanish pirate. In rainy Genoa, hundreds of creatures sought the dryness of their estate, including a huge lynx. When Napoleon's armies invaded Italy, Genoa authorities interrogated the woman like a spy. 

To escape the war in Europe while Napoleon tried to conquer the world, they went to Connecticut and taught at an all-female school to find and free women like themselves and several slaves. They vacationed in Puerto Rico for warmer weather and learned that the family of the man she assisted at Bastille, who died a martyr, revered her. After retiring, they would live comfortably.