Date Published: 4-21-2026
Publisher: Ground One Press
New York City, 1981. Dianna leaves her small southern town for the bright lights and rich culture of the Big Apple and a prime job at the Met. Sparks fly when she crosses paths with a charming Lebanese diplomat. A shared night of passion launches her into an exciting romance and opens her eyes to a bloody conflict far from home. But as warring factions take hold overseas, she can’t shake the feeling that her new love is hiding dark secrets.
Qasim has never known peace. When he gets the chance to bring his country’s troubles before the United Nations, he abandons his family obligations to heal his war-torn homeland. But his true mission takes a detour when he falls for a beautiful American woman. Against the urging of his closest friend and mentor, he wants to share his heart and hopes with her.
In the face of cultural barriers and mounting war, can Dianna and Qasim find the strength to stand up for their love and a lasting peace?
Interview with Kathy Ramsperger
(aka Kathryn Brown Ramsperger)
Author of The Shores of Our Souls
Could you tell us about any research trips you took for this story? Which places did you visit, and what made them essential to your writing?
My life experience was my research, so I used what it taught me to research my Bridge Between Shores series (THE SHORES OF OUR SOULS, A THOUSAND FLYING THINGS and BEFORE THERE WAS DISCO). I was a humanitarian reporter for decades for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, covering Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. I spent a lot of time in feeding stations, displaced persons camps, and family tracing centers. I did take a trip specifically to Beirut to specifically research both of my novels in this series. I was glad to have many friends and colleagues there. I interviewed them all over delicious meals. It’s a lovely country, as I describe in my books, between the mountains and the Mediterranean. I was a Red Cross delegate in southern and eastern Africa, and I transformed some of the true stories I witnessed there for my second novel A Thousand Flying Things.
What's the strangest thing you've ever had to research online for your book?
I didn’t think any research topic was strange, but I did wonder if someone who read my search history would wonder why I was googling so much about war, the Middle East, and South(ern) Sudan. For a time, it was almost all I was searching for, other than parenting solutions and health cures (which I didn’t write much about).
I do have a research story about a place I knew nothing about before 1981, and that’s Molokai. I researched most of the photos (both published and unpublished) taken on that Hawaiian island while I was a National Geographic researcher. I’d love to go there some day to walk in the footsteps of Father Damien, who lived there with the last leper colonists on Earth in the late 1800s. After 11 years there, he died of leprosy himself.
In contrast, the cutest research I ever had to do was about Koko the Gorilla and her adopted kitten, Ball. I have a poster of them on my office wall now. Koko learned sign language and communicated with humans that way. She was trying to teach Ball to sign, too. It was an amazing story. Still is.
What research (history, mythology, science) goes into your world-building?
This was an easy world to re-create because I’d been to the places I wrote about. I mainly went back to memories and notes from interviews I’d done over the years. I read every book I could find on Lebanese history, conflict, and mythology, though. Here are a few tidbits, and I have photos of me in these places on my author website (let me know if you’d like a couple of them).
I like to visit or live in the places I write about. I need to spend enough time there to get to know the place and the people. My characters tend to be composites of real people I’ve met in my journey through life.
I also returned to old interviews, article edits, and notes–from museum visits and historical sites. My favorite historical site in Lebanon is Baalbek. What’s left there is mostly Roman ruins, but they were built over the Phoenician ruins, the sea traders who founded Lebanon. Lebanese cedars were thought to have built the Ark of the Covenant, and are mentioned often in the Bible.
I’m lucky to know a few librarians, including two at the Library of Congress. I read every book about Lebanon I could lay my hands on. I used old National Geographic articles (my former workplace) and interviewed a writer of one of them. You only “see” the conflicts if you simply watch the nightly news. It’s important to get to know a lot more because these countries are rich in history, culture, and in Lebanon, hospitality.
Yes, I do my research, but I prefer primary sources. I always return to real people in real time. What I witnessed. And then I make it an adventurous love story for my readers.
Have any of the people you've known, past or present, left a lasting impression on your writing journey? If so, we'd love to hear about a memorable experience that stands out to you.
So many. I studied creative writing at my university, and studied with some of the most amazing literary authors of that time: from Eudora Welty to Henry Taylor to Richard Adams to Greg Pape (Montana’s poet laureate) to RHW Dillard.
Most recently, I got the opportunity to chat with Adriana Trigiani, who shouted at me, “I know you!” She and I both love travel and grew up in SW Virginia, so that was incredibly special.
She signed my copy of The Good Left Undone (my favorite of all her novels) with, “you have the creativity, the gift, and drive. Never forget the power of One: YOU!”
She is prolific, gifted, and incredibly kind. Many authors would not have taken the time for that note. I told her, “from your lips to Heaven’s ears,” and she giggled like it was true.
Finally, the brave and courageous people I’ve met in my work have inspired nearly every story I write. I want readers to get to know them like I have, to walk and talk with them, to sit down and have a coffee or meal with them.
Do you write in the same genre all the time?
I sometimes think I need to write in the same genre to get more readership. I’m struggling with that right now. I write what I like to read. I started with adventure stories in grade school, read the social justice of Dickens, Eliot and Angelou in high school and university, and I enjoy romantic suspense like Daphne duMaurier wrote, and cozy mysteries like Agatha Christie penned. I don’t read much thriller or horror, but I adore fantasies with time travel.
All my fiction has been for women who love humanity and enjoy exploration and history, and that’s the universal umbrella and ideal reader for every piece of fiction I publish. There’s also a romantic element in my books, because I believe that unconditional love and open communication can conquer war.
If so, have you ever consider writing in another one?
All the time. I have other unpublished series that are not multicultural women’s fiction. They are more dark Victorian mystery and paranormal fantasy. I’m having a great time researching them, and strange things have happened with these series. They send chills up my spine. I so want others to read them.
Which character, supernatural or human, do you enjoy writing the most and why?
I’m not trying to be glib, but it really is the protagonist I’m writing about right now. I consider it teamwork, they come alive for me, and I inhabit my protagonist like an actor does the character they are portraying. They live beside me and guide every scene.
I love both protagonists in The Shores of Our Souls for different reasons. Qasim is a world-wise but sensitive man who has made it through war and done (mostly) right by his family. Dianna is strong, brave, and determined to succeed in spite of an ill mother and growing up isolated and in poverty. They are both free spirits, and together they make great partners. They are kindred spirits and also foils for each other. They are always ready for adventure.
In one of the two series I’m working on now, I sometimes think I’m channeling one of my protagonists in my early morning hours. He was a psychic detective and met an early death. And who’s to say I’m not?
Having firsthand experience in the places she writes about, Kathryn brings a unique authenticity to her stories, blending rich cultural details with the universal themes of love, redemption, and peace. She studied creative writing at Hollins University, and publications management at George Washington University. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband. They have two adult children, off to their own world adventures, but still parent a feisty feline. Next on their bucket list: Croatia, Portugal, or Tanzania!
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