Elizabeth Percer: Subversive Author of ALL STORIES ARE LOVE STORIES

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Hello Reds and lovely readers! Today, I'm delighted to introduce you to Elizabeth Percer, the author of AN UNCOMMON EDUCATION, which I absolutely loved. She's a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and twice honored by the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation.

Her latest novel, just out, is titled ALL STORIES ARE LOVE STORIES. Publishers Weekly calls it "gripping [and] poignant ... an unconventional love letter to San Francisco" and raves, "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."

Here's a more detailed description of the novel:

In this thoughtful, mesmerizing tale, the author of An Uncommon Education follows a group of survivors thrown together in the aftermath of two major earthquakes that strike San Francisco within an hour of each other—an achingly beautiful and lyrical novel about the power of nature, the resilience of the human spirit, and the enduring strength of love.

On Valentine’s Day, two major earthquakes strike San Francisco within the same hour, devastating the city and its primary entry points, sparking fires throughout, and leaving its residents without power, gas, or water.

Among the disparate survivors whose fates will become intertwined are Max, a man who began the day with birthday celebrations tinged with regret; Vashti, a young woman who has already buried three of the people she loved most . . . but cannot forgot Max, the one man who got away; and Gene, a Stanford geologist who knows far too much about the terrifying earthquakes that have damaged this beautiful city and irrevocably changed the course of their lives.

As day turns to night and fires burn across the city, Max and Vashti—trapped beneath the rubble of the collapsed Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium—must confront each other and face the truth about their past, while Gene embarks on a frantic search through the realization of his worst nightmares to find his way back to his ailing lover and their home.

And by morning, nothing will be the same.

SUSAN: Welcome, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH PERCER: Hello, and thank you for having me.

I’m sorry to report that, in recent years, I’ve had more than a few older gentleman explain to me that the novel is on its way out. This is mansplaining at its worst, and I cannot defend it. Of course, sir, I want to say, in earning my B.A. and master’s and Ph.D. and raising three children and living for four decades, I have been waiting for you, a relative stranger, to set me straight on the novel’s place in popular culture.

There are so many ways that being a novelist is counterculture these days, and I’ve never been happier to be straying from the herd. It’s such a delicious thrill, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that narrative is as essential to our existence as the campfires that inspired it, that to relate to one another’s experience is at the very core of humanity itself, and that no, I do not fear the sort of virtual apocalypse some like to predict. You know the one, where machines take over minds and we all find ourselves in a world of steel and fogs of dubious origin. Blah, blah, blah, snooze, snooze, snooze.

Like most writers, I came to writing through reading, and if reading has shown me anything, it’s that a kaleidoscopic view of the world is the most rewarding one we can take. Extremes can coexist in the most contradictory and fabulous ways possible. A good, old-fashioned novel can be enjoyed just as thoroughly as the latest finely honed technology. I can still bury my nose deep in the pages of a new book and inhale that ineffable olfactory delight that is some mix of paper and ink and glue, and it does not mean that I don’t also thrill at the fact that my Kindle can deliver that novel I’ve been dying to read in less than a minute. As writers and readers, I think it’s so important that we continue to champion the beautiful paradox, the seemingly impossible coexistences that make up our glittering, mysterious world.

My second novel, All Stories Are Love Stories, comes out this week, and its title came to me almost as soon as its subject matter did. It’s about the destruction of modern day San Francisco, thanks to a series of fires that are triggered by two major earthquakes. It’s easy to see that title as Pollyannaish, but the truth is that I see love and fear as two sides of the same equation, that to care at all about something is to also court vulnerability, to be open and exposed to the unexpected. Love isn’t an easy thing in this context, but it’s pervasive, leaking in through even the hardest stories, giving paradox itself the kind of color that we can’t quite define but will happily spend our lives exploring.

So even though certain older gentleman might see a female novelist writing about love as quaint and as easily dismissed as bobby socks and pigtails, I see it as nothing short of the most rebellious act I can muster. To stay soft, and to embrace that softness, that indefinable way of moving through the world with my heart and mind open, is to pay homage to every story I’ve ever read that changed me because I was willing to be changed, to every reader I’ve met who showed me a side to a story only she see, and to every writer who’s taught me more about myself and this world through the narratives that run through it, too infinite to count, too essential to fear destruction.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Thank you, Elizabeth. 

Reds and readers, do you think the novel's on the way out? Or here to stay? Is being a novelist, in and of itself, a rebellious act? Subversive? Counter-culture? Are books "too essential to fear destruction"? Please tell us in the comments.

Elizabeth Percer is a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and has twice been honored by the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation. She received a BA in English from Wellesley and a PhD in arts education from Stanford University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship for the National Writing Project at UC Berkeley. She lives in California with her husband and three children. All Stories Are Love Stories is her second novel.