Forthcoming Publication

Press Release

An unexpected find leads author on long journey of discovery

The soon to be published Kisses From A Distance, Cune Press, Seattle, Wash., was conceived after the author's family's discovery of a cache of letters in their mother’s personal effects upon her death in 1994. Mr. Ellis began researching and writing the memoir after the 200 or so letters were translated by a linguist at Lebanese American University, Bierut, Lebanon. Upon reading the correspondence many times the author decided they would form the basis for an engaging story.

Mr. Ellis then undertook a journey to research his book, a journey that would last nearly eight years before the work was completed. The expedition took Mr. Ellis to libraries, bookstores, archives, and remote Lebanese mountain villages where he recorded the oral histories of relatives and village elders. The non-fiction work chronicles the travails of the three branches of his Lebanese family in the early 20th Century, including before and after they immigrated to the US.

The work spans nearly one hundred years starting in 1895 with the author’s grandmother’s abduction from a remote convent in the mountains of Lebanon. The chronicle, often told in the story's principals' own words, examines the Lebanese ethos through the lives of family members—both in Lebanon and America. The reader is taken on a journey that includes Ottoman oppression, emigration to America, the travails endured in Lebanon during World War I, and conditions the immigrants faced upon arrival in America.

Comments by professionals who have read the work have been extremely favorable.

Change the name of the country of origin, or the date, or the variety of hardships encountered en route or the societal prejudices that were waiting in America, and you have what every immigrant of those years would instantly recognize. Raff Ellis has created not an exercise in nostalgia but a serious and disciplined historical study. This book has something for all whose personal or family history includes immigration. And, since we are a nation of immigrants, this includes all of us.

Dr. Samuel Hazo, Professor Emeritus Duquesne UniversityDirector International Poetry forum, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Kisses From A Distance will be available in September at Amazon.com and CunePress.net as well as local bookstores. Autographed copies may be ordered at raffellis.com.