Seeds of the Pomegranate

A gritty story of a woman learning to survive in 20th century Gangland New York

In early 20th-century Sicily, noblewoman Mimi Inglese, a talented painter, dreams of escaping the rigid expectations of her class by gaining admission to the Palermo Art Academy. But when she contracts tuberculosis, her ambitions are shattered. With the Sicilian nobility in decline, she and her family leave for New York City in search of a fresh start.

Instead of opportunity, Mimi is pulled into the dark underbelly of city life and her father's money laundering scheme. When he is sent to prison, desperation forces her to put her artistic talent to a new use- counterfeiting $5 bills to keep her family from starvation and, perhaps, to one day reclaim her dream of painting. But as Gangland violence escalates and tragedy strikes, Mimi must summon the courage to flee before she is trapped forever in a life she never wanted.

Author: Suzanne Samuels
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Sibylline Press
Published: 09/02/2025
Pages: 381
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 8.47h x 5.32w x 0.93d
ISBN: 9781960573445


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/23/2025

About the Author
Samuels, Suzanne: - Suzanne Samuels is a full-time writer whose award-winning stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals. Seeds of the Pomegranate is her debut novel and received an honorable mention in the 2024 Thomas Wolfe Prize for Fiction. She was a finalist in the Women's Fiction Writers Association 2023 Rising Star contest. The prequel to Seeds of the Pomegranate, The Orphans' Wheel, set during the violent nineteenth-century Italian Wars of Independence, also will be published by Sibylline Press. She lives in the Adirondacks Mountains in upstate New York.