SARANAC LAKE — A talk with novelist Suzanne Uttaro Samuels about her new book, Seeds of the Pomegranate, will take place Tuesday, Sept. 2, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the John Black Room at the Saranac Laboratory Museum at 89 Church Street, Saranac Lake. Amy Catania, executive director of Historic Saranac Lake, will join Samuels in a conversation exploring how tuberculosis reshaped gender roles, displaced families, and generated both confinement and unexpected agency, especially for women navigating systems of power and illness. Together, they’ll uncover the historical silences and living echoes of TB, asking: Who was allowed to heal? Who was forgotten? And what stories still need to be told?

Samuels’ new book explores a time, at the turn of the 20th century, when tuberculosis was more than a diagnosis. It was a force that transformed lives, landscapes, and the very meaning of health, care and survival. From immigrant tenements to mountain sanatoriums like those in Saranac Lake, TB created a world where breath became precious, rest became radical, and silence often held untold stories.