Book SPotlight: The Shores of Our Souls by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger

  

SYNOPSIS:

Culture shaped them. Chance united them. Love transformed them.

Qasim, an Arab Muslim U.N. official fleeing family obligations in 1980s war-torn Lebanon meets Dianna, escaping her rural Southern roots to become a researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Will their love be enough in this war-torn, conflict-weary world? Ramsperger's debut novel gives an entirely new perspective on the controversial conflicts in our hearts and in our history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

athryn’s novel The Shores of Our Souls is an multicultural story about two star-crossed lovers. Protagonists Dianna and Qasim have the opportunity to transform each others' lives, but first they must navigate a world of distrust, politics, religion, judgment, and their own secrets.

Kathryn wrote her debut novel in response to 9/11’s Ground Zero, because she wanted to center and align people and shift societal prejudices and labels. As a young adult, she devoured novels by writers who cared about social justice: Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Eudora Welty (a frequent visitor to her university campus), Barbara Kingsolver, and Anne Lamott. Her favorite novel is John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

As a quirky, weird child, Kathryn wanted to shift the world through words and stories. Every summer she sat on a wooden porch swing, listening to friends and relatives weave stories of the day, the weather, local politics, and news from all around. Yet she wanted to leave and live far beyond that porch.

MANY VOICES

As she began to travel, Kathryn still felt a longing to tell stories, carrying family love and Southern lore with her. She felt a pull to see the world, so she became a journalist, publishing in newspapers, magazines and literary journals, working full-time for the National Geographic Society. She felt a longing to support that world, so she joined the International Red Cross and Red Crescent. She wanted to connect the world and its stories, to link people needing help to those who could help them, so she became an entrepreneur, a speaker, and a coach.

ONE WORLD

Through her journey, and other people's stories, she’s come to see the world as One. Decades from that porch swing, she continues to share stories, connecting neighbors from one continent to the next. She’s given a voice to the homeless, people with AIDS, patients searching for a blood or bone marrow donor, neighborhoods ravaged by disaster, refugees fleeing poverty and civil strife, and victims of war.

INFINITE POSSIBILITIES

Kathryn always returns to the WORD. She’s used words to:

• win the Hollins University Fiction Award for her novel Moments On The Edge,

• write award-winning nonfiction,

• direct an international publications department,

• own a cause-related marketing business,

• create her umbrella company, Ground One, to search for solutions that will result in social change,

• receive literary and cause-related marketing awards,

• sing as a mezzo soprano,

• shake the hands of Jimmy Carter, Princess Diana, and Nelson Mandela,

• break bread with Kinky Friedman and Marita Golden,

• meet people on almost every continent,

• teach and speak to people searching for inner peace, their own grounding, in a world that sometimes seems all chaos.

Kathryn graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English from Hollins University in Virginia, and earned her graduate degree in Publications Management from George Washington University. She’s lived and worked in Europe and Africa, traveling throughout the Middle East. Her most recent short story, “A Green Rose,” was published by and received an award of excellence from the journal Willow Review, and The Shores of Our Souls was a semi-finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Literary Competition. All of her writing focuses on the search for peace and the connections we all share.

Of course, she used her words to write this novel, which readers can now pre-order. It's a product of who she is and all the people she’s met along the way. It’s her desire that her readers get one step closer to their own label-less, limit-less life with every chapter they read.

Shoresofoursouls.com

info@shoresofoursouls.com

MY REVIEW:

The Shores of Our Souls by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger

Next book due in winter months

Story follows Diane who now lives in NYC with a cataloging job at Met Museum  as she pays off her student loans.

She lives with other girls and they stay in contact with one another, especially when on a date wit others that nobody knows anything about.

Story also follows Qasim who grew up in Lebanon and is Muslim. They get a lot of stares as they go out to dinner in the city...

Story also goes back in time to events they experienced while growing up, bombings, fond memories of beach  and family gatherings.

He relocated to the US, a UN diplomat and he travels a lot overseas.

Divorced with a child that lives with his mother which really eats at Diane as her imagination goes wild.

Adult situations but it really was a great read. NOT one I would've picked up on my own as I prefer romance novels. This  is a bit off the beaten path for me. Learned so many new words (yes I look them up when I come across them) and learned so much about overseas and how things are done there and why.

Following Diane around she seems so carefree and does what she wants and she has a good time. 

Love the choices that are in each of their lives and how they choose what is important to each. Didn’t see it ending as it did but it leaves the story open for you to finish...

Can't wait for the next from this author as she describes perfectly the scene and the effect on the character. I felt as if I was right there with them.