TRUE LOVE AND OTHER DREAMS OF MIRACULOUS ESCAPE

Magical and funny, profound and seductive, the linked stories in TRUE LOVE AND OTHER DREAMS OF MIRACULOUS ESCAPE explore the life-bending power of love. In these interwoven lives, ardent desire meets a keen sense of reality deep in the heart of progressive California.

When Sadie opens a funky bookstore in Santa Cruz, she is swept off her feet by Daniel, a true-blue romantic-athletic, bookish, from Santiago, Chile. Their connection is heady and erotic, and it echoes through the love lives around them: from Harry Houdini's first encounter with the widow Winchester to the threatening intimacy between a wife and her brother to a grumpy teenager who inspires her divorced parents. Years later, when Sadie and Daniel take an overdue trip to Paris, their blended family doesn't blend so well, sending them back to rediscover their roots. The desire for passion is as strong as the desire to escape in these interconnected lives, and the terror of claustrophobic connection competes with the deepest human yearning.
This is an intoxicating look at the complexity and simplicity of embracing and running from love, by the award-winning author of What Becomes Us.

Micah Perks is the author of what Becomes Us, a novel; We Are Gathered Here, a novel; Pagan Time, a memoir; and a long personal essay from Shebooks, Alone In The Woods. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, The Toast, OZY and The Rumpus, amongst many journals and anthologies. She has won an NEA, five Pushcart Prize nominations, and the New Guard Machigonne 2014 Fiction Prize. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University and now lives with her family in Santa Cruz where she co-directs the creative writing program at UCSC.