All Stories Are Love Stories
“A stunning tale of perseverance and affection in the face of disaster…Her literary command, which also has elements of magical realism and the headlong suspense of a thriller, forces you to take your time…a book to savor.” (Washington Independent Review of Books)
“This captivating, and at times heartrending, novel demonstrates the powerful forces of nature and love.” (Women’s Day)
“[M]akes good on the promise of its title by reshaping a fictional disaster story into one of love . . . Even the most jaded reader can be moved by Percer’s conception of San Francisco.” (Shelf Awareness)
“Gripping, poignant. . . . San Francisco’s unique architecture, diverse neighborhoods, and colorful residents are vividly brought to life. The intertwined love stories in this remarkably drawn setting will keep readers absorbed until the final, tear-jerking moments.” (Publishers Weekly)
“In All Stories Are Love Stories, the faultlines run deep: secrets are laid bare, and regrets threaten to swallow a handful of characters caught in a devastating earthquake. You’ll hope for their survival, but you’ll pray that they’ll forgive each other—and themselves—before their crumbling city swallows them whole.” (Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet)
“…gripping and affecting…Percer has delivered a heartfelt valentine to San Francisco, lyrical in its language, suspenseful in its incidents.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Dazzlingly plotted and thematically rich . . . . Percer, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and author of An Uncommon Education (2012), compellingly delivers a story of love in the ruins.” (Wellesley Magazine)
“Not only a vivid and frightening tale about a devastating earthquake, it’s also a love letter to San Francisco and a compassionate and thoughtful look into its characters’ lives and secret hearts. There is sweetness and hope among the ruins, and that makes Percer’s novel all the more compelling.” (Edan Lepucki, author of California )
“Elizabeth Percer explores big themes of love, longing, loss, and, of course, survival. All Stories are Love Stories is a moving reminder of the way stories connect, and the way we connect through stories, as well as a gorgeous contemplation of the stabilizing force of love.” (Meg Waite Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Race for Paris)
“All Stories are Love Stories is a gripping novel, full of love for a group of wonderful characters and a shattered San Francisco. Elizabeth Percer’s beautiful writing and her overwhelming compassion enable us to take this harrowing journey through a very possible near future world.” (Ellen Sussman, New York Times bestselling author of A Wedding in Provence and French Lessons)
“This engaging novel is a thoughtful celebration of human spirit, the moving force of love, and a gentle reminder of the unstoppable fate we all live under: nature.” (Sunset Magazine)
An Uncommon Education
“Enticing and shyly perceptive.” (New York Times Book Review)
“Think Dead Poet’s Society or The Secret History.” (New York Post)
“A fine novel and a young writer to watch.” (Hudson Valley News)
“[Naomi demonstrates] how to make the kinds of choices that eventually lead to an uncommon but joy-filled life.” (Oprah.com)
“Three-time Pushcart nominee Percer offers an uncommonly good debut that’s finely detailed and emotionally gripping while avoiding every pitfall of the standard coming-of-age tale. Highly recommended.” (Library Journal (starred review))
“Poet Percer’s fiction debut is an intimate portrait of an intelligent, tender girl with a deep wish to protect those she loves.” (Publishers Weekly)
“A moving and bittersweet coming-of-age story about love, loss, friendship, ambition, and the power of memory. This complex and satisfying tale introduces a cast of quirky, hilarious, intellectual young women, struggling to find their place in the world.” (J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Maine and Commencement)
“Bonds of love, family and friendship, sometimes damaged or beyond repair, are nevertheless celebrated in an intense debut by a noted poet. . . . [A] thoughtful coming-of-age tale that hovers observantly on the edge of melancholia.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“A wistful debut novel by noted Bay Area poet.” (San Jose Mercury News)
“Percer’s lyrical novel has much to offer.” (Booklist)
“Eloquent, haunting and exquisitely written, Percer’s stunning debut finds surprising beauty in the broken places of our lives. Here, winning can’t mute pain, but love endures despite the odds, and the education of a remarkable young woman is as uncommonly original as this novel itself.” (Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You)
“Haunting and poignant, Elizabeth Percer’s coming-of-age novel portrays a bright young woman confronting her limits as she watches those she loves deal with illness and betrayal. Each turn of this elegiac debut revealed stark truths that left me both moved and astonished.” (Lauren Belfer, New York Times bestselling author of A Fierce Radiance and City of Light)
“It’s impossible not to care about Naomi Feinstein . . . An Uncommon Education beautifully [brings] Naomi to the Bard (the play’s the thing), but also gives the reader something much rarer–a world, and a life, that seem real.” (Nicole Mones, author of Lost in Translation and The Last Chinese Chef)
“Elizabeth Percer relates the life story of Naomi Feinstein with beautifully scripted, lush prose drawing in the reader and providing an unobstructed view deep into the hearts of her characters. . . . Rich in history, steeped in family tradition, and full of emotion–a lesson in practiced elegance.” (New York Journal of Books)
ULTRASOUND
“In lucid language and haunting images, Elizabeth Percer travels a path from loss to fulfillment, revealing much more than a simple narrative of grief transformed to joy. These poems investigate the nature of perception, the experience of technology-assisted imagination peering into a mysterious inner landscape.” — Nan Cohen, author of Rope Bridge
“In these compelling and ambitious poems, Elizabeth Percer interrogates ‘the murky significance’ of life: its genesis, tenuousness, and our hope for its very existence. As if arguing that life begins in the root of a word, Percer’s moving and miraculous poems echo with a curiosity both ‘tender’ and ‘invasive,’ and prove, by their primal and presumptive longing, that language itself can be umbilical: at once clinical and lyrical.”
— Robin Ekiss, poet and author of The Mansion of Happiness
“Elizabeth Percer’s Ultrasound is a book of surpassing beauty. It probes the despair of losing an infant before birth and also the joys of later delivering a healthy one. Medical details of pregnancy are conveyed in language that is lushly lyrical rather than clinical. An ultrasound is framed as ‘Let us play a game of clouds.’ One doesn’t have to have carried or delivered a child to feel awed by these poems — only to remember that each of us had to make the miraculous journey from darkness into light and air.”
— Susan Terris, Ghost of Yesterday, New & Selected Poems
“The birth of a child is a revelation, in this one day are all our days, it is happiness, it means to understand and the recognition of the chance one takes giving life. Everything else becomes irrelevant. Elizabeth Percer brings to her poetry the devastation of a miscarriage and the beauty of parturition. In her collection, Ultrasound, she writes, ‘And then they drew you out / half-blind, sugared with birth.'”
— Joseph Zaccardi, poet laureate of Marin County, California
“In lucid language and haunting images, Elizabeth Percer travels a path from loss to fulfillment, revealing much more than a simple narrative of grief transformed to joy. These poems investigate the nature of perception, the experience of technology-assisted imagination peering into a mysterious inner landscape.” — Nan Cohen, author of Rope Bridge
“In these compelling and ambitious poems, Elizabeth Percer interrogates ‘the murky significance’ of life: its genesis, tenuousness, and our hope for its very existence. As if arguing that life begins in the root of a word, Percer’s moving and miraculous poems echo with a curiosity both ‘tender’ and ‘invasive,’ and prove, by their primal and presumptive longing, that language itself can be umbilical: at once clinical and lyrical.”
— Robin Ekiss, poet and author of The Mansion of Happiness
“Elizabeth Percer’s Ultrasound is a book of surpassing beauty. It probes the despair of losing an infant before birth and also the joys of later delivering a healthy one. Medical details of pregnancy are conveyed in language that is lushly lyrical rather than clinical. An ultrasound is framed as ‘Let us play a game of clouds.’ One doesn’t have to have carried or delivered a child to feel awed by these poems — only to remember that each of us had to make the miraculous journey from darkness into light and air.”
— Susan Terris, Ghost of Yesterday, New & Selected Poems
“The birth of a child is a revelation, in this one day are all our days, it is happiness, it means to understand and the recognition of the chance one takes giving life. Everything else becomes irrelevant. Elizabeth Percer brings to her poetry the devastation of a miscarriage and the beauty of parturition. In her collection, Ultrasound, she writes, ‘And then they drew you out / half-blind, sugared with birth.'”
–Joseph Zaccardi, poet laureate of Marin County, California