Ruth Finnegan's epic romance novel, Black Inked Pearl, was inspired by her own dreams. Perhaps these dreams grew from her subconscious or even shreds of memories from past lives, dating all the way back to the Middle Ages. Either way, heroine Kate was born: a naïve Irish girl who jilts her mysterious lover and spends the rest of her life searching for him again.

The novel itself is interspersed with poems, and now, the poems have been compiled into one collection: Kate's Black Ink Poems. Read separately or in conjunction with Black Inked Pearl. Each chosen poem compellingly shows us the torments, delight, and travails of love as Kate suffers through them-but as we, too, experience the highs and lows of passion.

Many of the poems included here function as significant turning points in the novel. They each speak volumes in regards to Kate's plight but also the plight of all those who battle for true love and feel the sting of loss. We all seek love, the sweetest thing, but the path...