By: Suzanne Uttaro Samuels
ISBN: 9781960573445
Sibylline Press, 2025
Seeds of the Pomegranate (Sibylline Press, 2025) follows Mimi Inglese, a young noblewoman and gifted painter in early twentieth-century Sicily who longs to study at the Palermo Art Academy and escape the confines of her class. When tuberculosis shatters her ambitions and her family’s fortunes decline, she travels with them to New York City, seeking renewal in a land of promise.
Instead, Mimi finds herself in a world of tenement shadows and moral compromise. Drawn into her father’s money-laundering scheme and, later, forced by desperation to use her artistry to forge currency, she discovers that survival can demand its own form of creation.
As violence and loss close in, Mimi must find the courage to reclaim her life—and the art that once defined her.
Inspired by true immigrant histories, Seeds of the Pomegranate is a story of women’s ingenuity, endurance, and the transformative power of art amid hardship.
About the Author
Suzanne Uttaro Samuels is a novelist and essayist whose work explores women’s resilience, art, and reinvention amid social and historical upheaval. A former college professor and award-winning legal scholar, she now writes fiction that bridges the personal and the political, often drawing on her Sicilian American roots. Her debut novel, Seeds of the Pomegranate (Sibylline Press, 2025), follows a young artist caught between art, survival, and self-determination in immigrant New York. Suzanne’s work has appeared in anthologies and literary journals. She lives in the Adirondack Mountains with her husband, dog, and two cats.
To learn more about Suzanne Uttaro Samuels and her work, please see www.suzannesamuels.com
