Lost No More: 3 Riveting Novels Based on True Family Tales
- N.J. Mastro
- Sep 27
- 9 min read
In Herstory Revisited, I review biographical novels about famous women from the past. As much as I love reading about notable people, sometimes the most interesting stories come from the humblest of places: home.
Recently I wrote a short story inspired by my grandmother Mabel Peterson (1908-2001). “Breadline” takes place in 1935 in St. Paul, Minnesota and will be published this fall in Feisty Deeds II: Historical Tales About Batches and Brews.
In this collection, themes of women eating, drinking, cooking, brewing, concocting—you name it—will be served up by an exciting roster of historical fiction authors. In “Breadline,” Mabel is an off-page character supporting three women trying to make ends meet.
As the title implies, bread plays an important role in the story, literally and figuratively. During the Depression, food and jobs were scarce. Single women had a particularly rough time finding work. It’s also true I love to bake bread, and, yes, Grandma Mabel had a hand in teaching me how.
While the story is intended as a tribute to her, writing it reminded me of the powerful role personal histories play in unearthing society’s broader story. Today we’re looking at three gripping novels based on real women who weren’t celebrated or famous. Rather, they were ordinary women who lived extraordinary lives. Seeds of the Pomegranate is a story of the Sicilian mob in New York City at the turn of the 20th century—told from the female perspective. Rock Bottom, Tennessee is about a woman living in Appalachia during the Depression and the difficult choices she had to make to survive. And Hatfield 1677 is the story of a woman and her children captured by Algonquian Natives in 1677 Massachussetts, along with how they survived a 300-mile forced journey north on foot to Canada in winter.
To tell you about the novels and why they were determined to bring their ancestors’ stories to light, I’ve called on the authors themselves to explain who their book is based on, why they chose to write about them, and how delving into their family’s past impacted them personally. (Two of these authors also have family stories coming out in Feisty Deeds II.)
Seeds of the Pomegranate by Suzanne Uttaro Samuels
In 1905, nineteen-year-old Mimi Inglese contracts tuberculosis, ending her hopes of becoming an artist and of escaping the expectations placed on women of her class. Dependent on her male relatives for survival, she travels with her family to New York City after their estate in Sicily begins to collapse. But the New World offers no easy refuge.
In New York, Mimi is drawn into her father’s money-laundering scheme. When he is arrested, she begins counterfeiting five-dollar bills herself, determined to support her family and find a measure of control over her future. After her sister’s death, Mimi takes in her young nephew and sets aside her own ambitions to raise him. But as violence and uncertainty close in, she must find the strength to begin again—and make choices that will shape both their lives.
“The protagonist in Seeds of the Pomegranate is Mimi Inglese, my great-grandaunt, born in Sicily in 1884. I didn’t know about Mimi until I was researching a horrific tenement fire my Grandpa survived as a young boy. Grandpa didn’t talk much about the fire, which had left lasting physical and emotional scars, except to say that the fire had killed his whole family and that he alone survived because he’d “fallen or was pushed” into the arms of a fireman on the street below. When I found that story on the front page of the New York Times, I began to understand that it was likely Mimi who had pushed my grandfather out that window before perishing, along with Grandpa’s two younger brothers.
I chose Mimi because I was fascinated by this sacrifice she’d made. I began to wonder about who she’d been and what she might have wanted. At the time, I had a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old, kids about the same age as my grandfather’s little brothers. For a long time, I couldn’t get Mimi out of my mind: those last moments, when she came to understand the peril of that raging fire, and decided to save her sister’s boys instead of escaping out that window herself.
It was this sacrifice, along with her invisibility—other than her birth and death records, and an Ellis Island entry that incorrectly stated her age, there were no other records—that kept me wondering about her. Who had she been? What had she wanted? What were her last thoughts as that fire was devouring everything around her? That wondering became the seeds of my novel.
As it winds up, my grandfather’s family was involved in some dangerous activities, in New York City and probably in Sicily, as well. His grandfather, Antonino, born in 1855 to an unmarried noblewoman, was eventually claimed by his mother and got the family name and estate. By then, though, the Sicilian nobility had fallen on hard times. There is evidence that he fell in with a powerful mafioso, Vito Cascioferro, the son of his grandfather’s overseer.
Among other dealings, Vito was the head of a counterfeit currency operation in Palermo. The decision to send Antonino and his family to New York City was probably part of Vito’s plan to expand his business. When Antonino got to New York City, he almost immediately got into trouble. My grandfather had said nothing about Antonino, or the years his grandfather served at Atlanta Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison.
When I uncovered Antonino’s prison record, my brothers told me I must have gotten it wrong, and that even if it was correct, they didn’t want me writing about it. In my family, we were warned against airing the family’s dirty laundry, and a prison conviction for extortion was definitely dirty laundry. I wrote the story anyway. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were supportive. Neither brother has spoken to me about the publication of Seeds. I don’t think they’ve even read it.
In Fiesty Deeds II, my short story “The Sweetest Burden” is based on my great-great-grandmother, Rosina Inglese, the Nonna in Seeds. This is the story of why Rosina abandons her infant son to the orphans’ wheel and how she responds to the growing political, social, and economic unrest in Sicily after the 1860s Wars of Independence. Rosina is an idealist. She believes that after the revolution, she and her lover will reclaim their son, and they’ll live in a Sicily that is free and equal.”
(Suzanne Uttaro Samuels was a finalist for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s Rising Star Award, and Seeds was a finalist for the Historical Novel Society’s First Pages competition. Seeds of the Pomegranate has won early praise from Publishers’ Weekly, who said that “readers will be satisfied by this nuanced character portrait,” and Kirkus Reviews, who called it a “riveting and intelligent novel with a powerful message.”)
Visit Suzanne’s Website: https://www.suzannesamuels.com/
Rock Bottom, Tennessee by Kimberly Nixon
Life is hard for Ruby growing up in poverty on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather's farm where literally the sun didn’t shine. The Appalachian setting isn’t her friend as she searches for an easy life at the "tippy-top" with contentment and security. Two different men come into her life, one virtuous and the other rebellious. Ruby makes a series of bad decisions, causing her life to tumble into an unexpected outcome.
The Four Winds meets Blind Tiger in this tale during Prohibition Era Appalachian Tennessee, set in the early 1900s, where setting and mountain community become other characters of the story. Based on a real-life tale of the author’s grandmother, the reader gets immersed in Ruby’s choices as she searches for worthiness and belonging. Was the adventure worth the risk of losing her family? Will Ruby ever find what she is looking for?
“My novels Rock Bottom, Tennessee and its sequel, Rock Bottom Rising, are based on the true story of my grandmother Ruby, who committed a felony in 1925 Appalachia. I met my grandmother twice in my life but never knew much about her. I found her conviction papers about ten years ago and was intrigued by what compelled Ruby to leave my mother and sons as young children to choose this path.
I was weirdly impressed to realize that she set up a successful national network to sell stolen goods from the railroads. Her choices affected my mother deeply. I kept thinking how both my grandmother and mother would have fared better if women had more agency of their lives back then. The theme and compelling motivation for me to write these books was to explore what contributed to grandmother's choices.
I found out that Ruby’s father was killed in a buggy accident three weeks before she was born. My great-grandmother also disappeared (can’t find a death certificate but she wasn’t in the census as part of the household) when my grandmother was thirteen. The impact of generational trauma and her parent’s divorce compounded by the Appalachian life made my mother’s life very difficult (my mother grew up with no running water or electricity during the Depression). I had epiphany after epiphany of understanding about my family in the eight years it took me to write Rock Bottom, Tennessee.
I worried about what my cousins who still lived in Tennessee and my siblings would think about my novels. To my relief, they greatly supported and helped me market my books. We’ve had many cousin reunions to swap family stories and talk about the difficulties of the mountain life our parents endured.
My story in Feisty Deeds II, “Promises and Pie Crusts,” is inspired by my mother’s best friend, a woman who was like a grandmother to me and who loved to bake pies. My main character in “Promises and Pie Crusts” is a single woman who owns a pie shop in a small Midwestern city during the Depression and Prohibition. Out of necessity she faces a choice about survival during those difficult times.”
(Rock Bottom, Tennessee won runner up in the category fiction for the Hollywood Book Festival awards. Rock Bottom Rising won finalist for the Book Shelf awards for Fiction and won the Firebird International Award for Fiction. )
Visit Kimberly’s Website: https://kimberlynixon.com/
Hatfield 1677 by Laura C. Rader
Hatfield 1677 is a tale of three interwoven yet diverging journeys of strength and survival. Benjamin is driven by love and remorse to rescue his family; Martha is forced into captivity and desperately striving to protect her children; and Ashpelon is willing to risk everything to ensure the safety and freedom of his people.
Based on the lives of the author’s ancestors, this riveting and unforgettable novel gives voice to three vastly different experiences in North America during a time before the creation of the Declaration of Independence. Then, the land was but a wilderness and a battleground; equality was not yet perceived as self-evident; and liberty and happiness were nothing more than dangerous pursuits.
“Martha Waite was my 9th-great-grandmother, born in 1649 in Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of thirteen children of John Leonard and Sarah Heath or Heald. Her father was born in Wales and her mother in England, and they immigrated to Massachusetts sometime in the 1630s.
I am descended from two of her children, Sarah (Sally) Waite and John Waite, on my mother’s side. I was an adult when I found out about Martha. I had become interested in genealogy in the early 1990’s and researched my family at the Carlsbad, California’s library in the genealogical section.
I started with my parents and worked my way back, generation by generation, surname by surname. When I reached Jerusha Waite, my 6th great grandmother on my mother's father's side, I ran across several accounts of the attack on Hatfield, MA in 1677. I confirmed that Benjamin Waite and Martha Leonard Waite were my ancestors and did more research on them and that event. I began writing the novel but set it aside when my daughter was born and went back to it 25 years later, when I retired.
I was drawn to Martha’s story for many reasons, but primarily, her courage. She was 28 years old, five months pregnant, and the mother of three little girls when she was taken captive by an Algonquian tribe in 1677.
As the wife of a former fur trader turned volunteer military scout and farmer, she must have been healthy and resourceful, but nothing could have prepared her for the 300-mile, three-month long trek through uncharted wilderness. Yet, she endured, as did her children. I can only assume she was brave, clever and resilient, and motivated by her love for her husband and children and her faith in God.
I was proud of Martha, and proud to have much of her grit and optimism myself. My daughter enjoyed the novel even though she normally reads fantasy and romance, my maternal cousins shared it with their book club, and my paternal cousins advised me on indigenous people and battle scenes.”
(Hatfield 1677 has won a number of awards, including the following: 2025 Readers’ Choice Gold Medal Historical Fiction; 2025 Literary Titan Gold Book Award; 2025 Shortlisted for the Hawthorne Prize; 2025 Literary Global Book Awards Finalist Independent Book Award Historical Fiction; 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards First Place Chaucer Pre-1750s Historical Fiction and Cover; 2024 Feathered Quill Silver Debut Author Award; 2024 Chrysalis Brew Seal of Excellence; 2024 Chrysalis Brew Readers’ Choice Award Finalist; and 2024 American Writing Awards Historical Fiction Finalist)
Visit Laura’s Website: https://lcrwriter.com/
I hope you’ll take a look at these novels. I heartily recommend each! The covers alone are enough to draw readers in. And I must admit, reading them, I learned a great deal of history. I’m certain you will too.
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N.J. Mastro is the author of Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft.
“A captivating work of historical fiction, intellectually stimulating and dramatically engrossing... The author’s prose authentically captures the dialogue of the time and powerfully evokes the contradictions that make Wollstonecraft’s legacy so richly complex.”
-Kirkus Reviews
