The Amalgam is a stunning novel, lush with detail and rich with history. It intertwines the personal, cultural, and political. It unspools the concept of home into a stretched thread, traversing space and time. Most of all, the novel is an insightful and touching exploration of how memory, across generations, merges the past with the present. —-Zach Powers, author of The Migraine Diaries
I devoured Maria Karametou's, The Amalgam. Highly recommended. — Yvette Manessis Corporon, Internationally Bestselling Author, Daughter of Ruins
“THE AMALGAM”
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication Date: March 2026 (Preorder: January 2026)
Relating to the mass population shifts that impact our world today, set against the parallel events of WWI, The Amalgam is a story of uprooting and the search for a new home and sense of belonging. Through the immigrant and refugee experiences of two strong women—a grandmother and her granddaughter—who defy the odds to forge their own path in the world, and through the mysterious relic that binds them, the book explores cultural identity, displacement, family relationships, and love in its various manifestations.
The Amalgam - Description
Athens, 1984. All Meta wants is to escape her tyrannical father and the future he demands of her. But when her dying grandmother, Metaxia, presses a mysterious heirloom into her hands—begging her to return it to the lost Greek village in Asia Minor from which she was violently expelled during World War I—Meta makes a promise she doesn’t fully understand.
Fleeing to America in a desperate bid for freedom, Meta must survive on her own after her father cuts her off—penniless, hungry, and clinging to her dream of becoming an artist. Yet the heirloom wrapped in her grandmother’s handkerchief refuses to be forgotten. Years later, a shattering moment forces Meta to confront the life she has built—and the history she has tried to outrun.
Her journey to Turkey becomes a pilgrimage across continents and across time, echoing Metaxia’s own flight from violence decades earlier. As their parallel stories converge, Meta must finally face the truth: can we ever return to the places that made us—or only to the person we were meant to become?
Sweeping, intimate, and deeply human, The Amalgam is the tale of two women bound by survival, exile, and the unbreakable pull of home.
Pub date: 24-Mar-2026
Page count: 312
ISBN: 978-3-98832-220-3