The Promise Trilogy: Book One (TPT #1)

East Harlem, 1919. A girl graduates. A daughter rebels. A woman begins to awaken.

Lucie Santoro has committed the first sin of independence: she dared to imagine more.

While her mother insists a woman’s place is in the home—especially now, with so many young men lost to the Great War—Lucie crosses the graduation stage and claims her diploma. It’s a small act of rebellion in a community where Italian daughters are meant to marry well, bear children, and uphold tradition. But to Lucie, it’s proof she can want something beyond a hope chest and her mother’s approval.

Her path is already set: marriage to Carlo Colucci, a good man from a respectable family. It’s a practical match. Expected. Safe. The kind of future that keeps generations tethered to the old world.

But gratitude begins to feel like surrender.

When Sister Agnes offers her a position as a tutor, Lucie glimpses a different path—one where she might become a teacher, shape young minds, and build a life of her own. It’s a dangerous dream in a world where women have only just won the right to vote, where a mother’s love comes wrapped in warnings, and where ambition in a girl is seen as a kind of betrayal.

Then Dante Mazzarone returns from Chicago—wearing sharp suits, driving a gleaming motorcar, and carrying a past that’s more wound than history. He’s everything her family fears: unpredictable, Americanized, a boy who makes Lucie feel entirely seen. He doesn’t offer safety. He offers her a mirror.

Torn between the daughter her family needs and the woman she’s becoming, Lucie must ask herself the hardest question of all:

What does it cost to wake up? And once you do—can you ever go back to sleep?

Perfect for readers who love:

Lush, immersive historical settings that bring 1910s New York to life

Multigenerational drama and complex mother-daughter relationships

Stories of immigrant families navigating tradition and change

Heroines who fight to define their futures—and identities

Themes where personal rebellion collides with cultural expectation

From Sherilyn Decter, author of immersive historical fiction, The Promise is the first novel in a trilogy about waking up, choosing differently, and forging a life that belongs to no one else.

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet