Promises and Pomegranates

Elena is the novel’s dynamic protagonist, a young woman who begins the story as a disempowered and dutiful Mafia princess and develops into an emboldened and sexual freethinker. Initially, she says, “All that matters to la famiglia is that I keep my head down and abide by my duties” (15), and she does this by agreeing to marry Mateo de Luca, a man who abuses her. On her wedding day, she imagines her funeral and thinks of herself as “a hostage trapped in an elegant white gown” (17). Since Elena was a little girl, she has sought to earn the approval of her father, Rafael “Rafe” Ricci, sensing that she will never escape her mother’s overbearing criticism. She says, “All my life, I chased bruised cheeks and bloody knuckles, created brokenness beneath my fingertips by picking fights with others, because I thought it would make my Papà happy. That he’d see me as more than his little Mafia princess and maybe let me live the life I wanted” (49). She is denied every opportunity to make important choices for herself, obliged to go to college to become a teacher of literature rather than pursuing a career as a writer, forced to marry Kal just after Mateo dies, even forced to dress very modestly when she would prefer to be a little more daring.