Jennifer Vido: What’s the inspiration behind your latest release, BETWEEN TWO STRANGERS? Kate White: I get germs for book ideas from all sorts of places – news headlines, snippets of overheard conversation, memories, and so forth. But with BETWEEN TWO STRANGERS, the germ originated from a really crazy experience I had. After my mother died, the brother of mine who was her executor learned from the bank that a fairly substantial check from her small estate was sent to a woman whose name we didn’t recognize. My brothers and I were stunned. Who was this person? Did our mother have a secret we never knew about? After a family discussion, one of my other brothers recalled that the last name of this woman was the former married name of a much-married relative of ours. When approached, she admitted she’d received the check and had assumed my mother simply wanted to leave her something, which was a stretch for sure. Further exploration revealed that the whole thing was a terrible bank error. A new check was issued to my brothers and me, and though the bank had the right to ask for the money back from this woman, they never did….

Like many, I’ve posted ironic images on my Facebook pages comparing the 2020 Year of COVID to many things–a hula hoop made of barbed wire, a pinata that’s actually a hornet’s nest, a time clock that sent us in March from Standard Time not to Daylight Savings Time, but into the Twilight Zone. So perhaps more than in “normal” times, we can identify with protagonists who are attempting to reconstruct their lives in the aftermath of unprecedented upheaval. And aside from a world-wide pandemic, nothing uproots people and disturbs lives like war. We begin with a novel by three of the most talented writers penning historical fiction today, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.  The trio collaborated to create ALL THE WAYS WE SAID GOODBYE, using an iconic Parisian hotel as a locus for their stories.  Aurelie de Courcelles is devastated when, at the outbreak of World War I, her home is taken over as a German headquarters.  The dilemma is made more difficult when she discovers the commander’s aide de camp is the handsome young man who charmed her during her debut season in Paris.  Despite their opposing loyalties, friendship deepens into love…until betrayal drives Aurelie back to…