🌿 Persephone’s Stories
Above and Below: A Season of Bloom
“In the silence of winter, the seeds begin again.”
After many fits and starts, summer has finally arrived in the Adirondack Mountains.
Winter 2024–2025 was, as many longtime locals noted, an Old Time Winter. In Rainbow Lake, where I live, real-feel temperatures often dropped well below -30°F, and we had more than 110 inches of snowfall.
We endure a stretch here called Persephone’s Days, when daylight lasts fewer than 10 hours, from roughly November 5 through February 5. Gardeners and others embrace this long dormancy. It’s a vital stillness, a necessary hush that ensures the fierce bloom of spring.
This winter, as I prepared to launch my debut novel, Seeds of the Pomegranate, I found myself thinking often of Persephone—the goddess who lives half her life underground.
When she descends, the fields go fallow, the seeds sleep, and quiet reigns. But when she returns?
Everything changes.
In Rainbow Lake, green unfurled overnight. Pollinators buzzed back. The sky turned a crystalline blue. Last night, the light lingered past 9 p.m.
I felt the shift inside me, too.
Suddenly: blooming flowers, overflowing feeders, and a writing life coming alive.
I've been sending letters to festivals, bookstores, and cultural centers, offering workshops and walking tours connected to Seeds of the Pomegranate. The busy season is here. And with it, a sense of urgency—not only in nature, but in my creative work.
Walking my pup Zoey today, the sunlight-dappled fields glowing, I was overwhelmed by how brief and dazzling this season is. The present moment, lit with joy—and the knowledge that it won’t last.
There’s gratitude, too.
Generous reviewers are returning their blurbs for Seeds, full of warmth and care. A story I’ve been living with for more than ten years is about to meet the world.
And Mimi Inglese, my great-grand-aunt and the voice at the heart of this novel, will finally be heard.
Silenced in life,
silenced in death—
She speaks now.
The summer will pass. The light will change.
Persephone’s Days will return.
And I’ll welcome the hush again—the slowing down, the going inward. A time to restore, to reimagine. A time to return to myself.
Thank you for being here and for walking this path with me.
Suzanne
📖 Preorder Seeds of the Pomegranate
A historical novel of art, family, and forbidden economies in early 20th-century New York.
Coming September 2, 2025, from Sibylline Press.
🔗 Preorder now | 🌐 Visit my website | 🐦 Follow me on Instagram