Hello Book Lovers,
It is a Spotlight Day!! Today I bring you A Thousand Flying Things by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger. This is a lyrical, cross-cultural/ cross-genre historial romance. Below you will find a link to the Amazon link, excerpt, and book details!
💜,
Steph
A THOUSAND FLYING THINGS by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger
Publisher: Touchpoint PressPublication Date: June 20, 2023
Genre: Cross-Genre: Literary Multicultural Romance/Social Issues
Pages: 298
About the Book:
Chapter 1
Kathryn Brown Ramsperger has led a life full of words, music, adventure, and love.
As a researcher and writer for National Geographic and later, as a humanitarian journalist, her work took her throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to help people facing disaster, famine, and war. A Thousand Flying Things, her stand-alone sequel to her debut The Shores of Our Souls, combines the stories she witnessed in her work and travels with an imaginative plot to create a riveting, poignant novel. Kathryn lives in Maryland with her husband and rascaly cat Rhapsicle. She and her husband have two adult children, bound for their own creative adventures. Want more information? https://kathrynbrownramsperger.com
About the Book:
A love lost. A soul restored. A decade of secrets and separation.
In A THOUSAND FLYING THINGS, an idealistic American humanitarian worker with a decade of field experience arrives in 1991 Southern Sudan hoping to save the world, but it's the love of a child and the return of an old flame from Lebanon that ends up saving and healing her instead.
Qasim, charming and cosmopolitan, trying to save his homeland, Lebanon, and Dianna, brilliant and beautiful, trying to save children in war-torn 1990s Southern Sudan, bump into one another in Nairobi and fall in love again. In the face of cultural barriers, their commitment to family and career, and ongoing war, can they find the strength to stand up for both love and a lasting peace? Faced with unbearable choices, they must decide. Yet things are not what they seem, and it takes a child to show them the way and lead them home.
Culture shaped them. Love transformed them. Will a child unite them?
PRAISE for A THOUSAND FLYING THINGS:
“Ramsperger’s portrayal of the ravages of South Sudan is heartbreakingly vivid, resulting in a moving but unsentimental portrait of one nation’s anguish. Dianna is a compelling character as a pragmatic veteran of humanitarian work in Africa who still hopes for the best…. An exceedingly thoughtful reflection,…” — Kirkus Reviews
A carefully crafted and original work of literary excellence and eloquence, A Thousand Flying Things... is an extraordinary and memorable novel from cover to cover. One of those deftly written stories that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf, A Thousand Flying Things is especially and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Literary Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that A Thousand Flying Things is also available in a digital book format.” -- Midwest Book Review
February 14, 1991, Piecewood Displaced Persons Camp, Southern SudanToday Dianna’s reading from The Jungle Book, but none of them are listening. The few boys in front of her are exhausted before the day begins from yesterday‘s hard work and training. They probably have little time in their day for fantasy stories with talking tigers and snakes. Nothing like their lives...After class, the boys play football with an ancient deflated soccer ball. She brings her old Polaroid camera out. The boys drop their football and race towards this contraption, a camera from her past, but an object these boys have never seen. The resulting yellow, blurred images create quite a stir in this little camp. The children love to see themselves. They delight in making faces for the camera. They even primp, sometimes, hoping she will choose to snap one of them. It is more than a conversation starter; it is a show stopper, marketing her words with their pictures.Yet would words ever mean as much to these boys as they did to Dianna? Would they lay down their rifles to turn the pages of the books she provided? Her mind pushes against the languid heat that presses her into the earth, and her lungs try to take in more air. The smell of overused cooking oil, reminiscent of the many meals fried in it, cuts the air like a scythe. She longs for just one ice cube. That is when she sees a young child’s hand.The hand waves at her from behind a large rock. Flat on top, nature's idea of a throne, the stone hides the rest of a child’s body. The hand itself, though, is a work of art. It is a hand a hyena could tear off with one swift chomp. Tiny, ragged fingernails, dirt caked over hidden fingerprints, flies buzzing this way and that. The wrist is another thing altogether, smooth and shiny and strong. She takes up her Polaroid and begins snapping. The shutter clicks, and the photos whirl out until all the film is gone. They fall at her feet, creating a small dust storm."Hello?" She wonders if he understands even that simple greeting."Hey," he answers.Her eyes go wide. How does he know that word? Most boys know “”hi or “and “hello, but seldom use them because she greets them in their own language. And this boy looks barely old enough to speak many words at all."I teach myself book." The boy smiles. "You help?""Do you speak English?" Dianna fumbles in a mixture of English, Arabic and Dinka.The little boy smiles again, attempting to mimic her sounds. Then he slaps her hand with his, reaches into her pocket, finds an English tea biscuit, and pops it into his mouth. "Tank."Dianna laughs at the mispronunciation, wondering how long it took him to learn the sentence he greeted her with.Her heart is in her ears. She may have found her student."Name?" she asks."Annee," he answers.She laughs again, this time a broad, imp-like Dianna laugh, a laugh she barely recollects."No, that's my name. I am Di-ann-a." Her fingers point to her chest, correcting him, showing him it's her name. His beautiful muddy palm slips around them."You?" She points to his chest."Ka. Leel," he answers, sounding it out just as she has for him.
About the Author
As a researcher and writer for National Geographic and later, as a humanitarian journalist, her work took her throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to help people facing disaster, famine, and war. A Thousand Flying Things, her stand-alone sequel to her debut The Shores of Our Souls, combines the stories she witnessed in her work and travels with an imaginative plot to create a riveting, poignant novel. Kathryn lives in Maryland with her husband and rascaly cat Rhapsicle. She and her husband have two adult children, bound for their own creative adventures. Want more information? https://kathrynbrownramsperger.com
Awards For A Thousand Flying Things Thus Far:: A Pulpwood Queen & Timber Guy International Selection of the Month (Oct. 2023), A 5-Star Readers' FAvorite, Shortlisted (in Nov. 2023) for the Chatelaine Book Award for Romantic Fiction (waiting to hear if I made it to the next level)
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