Suzanne Uttaro Samuels

In Samuels’ impressive debut, an artist reckons with illness and loss while pursuing her career in early 1900s Sicily and New York City. In 1905, Mimi Inglese’s talent as a painter has made her likely to become the first woman ever admitted to the Palermo Academy of Fine Arts. Mimi views the program as an opportunity to forge a life on her own terms, and hopes to emulate the mythological Persephone, who became the master of her fate after having been tricked into entering the underworld. That myth turns out to mirror Mimi’s story when she and her middle sister Rosalia contract tuberculosis, scuttling her plans to attend the academy. After Rosalia dies and her youngest sister, Caterina, gets engaged to a man living in New York, Mimi and her parents move there with Caterina. Mimi looks up her godfather, Zio, who’d promised to be her patron, but instead he tricks her into joining his counterfeit currency scheme. She goes along with it, hoping that the earnings will secure her independence. Samuels makes Mimi a sympathetic figure even as she compromises her morals in pursuit of her interests, and the plot takes surprising turns. Readers will be satisfied by this nuanced character portrait. (Sept.)