All Stories Are Love Stories makes good on the promise of its title by reshaping a fictional disaster story into one of love. In Elizabeth Percer's follow-up to An Uncommon Education, an earthquake hits San Francisco on Valentine's Day, introducing danger and fear into the complicated lives of a diverse cast of characters. As the earthquake sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic events, bonds between couples or former couples across the city are tested or reignited by the experience. Max and Vashti--who considered their relationship long buried after years of recrimination, poor life choices and guilt--become trapped together in the ruins of the Nob Bill Masonic Auditorium. Gene is separated from his ailing lover, Franklin, and treks across the ruined San Francisco cityscape in an attempt to reunite with him.
Of all the love stories Percer tells in her novel, perhaps the most convincing is that of her own love for San Francisco. It's impossible to ignore the romance between the author and her setting on display in charming lines such as this one: "Every morning in San Francisco was a bit like waking up on the edge of the earth: beautiful and damp and wild, full of the strange music people make, open-armed, into the wind." Even the most jaded reader can be moved by Percer's conception of San Francisco as a place where people with broken or toxic families can form new ones out of nothing more complicated than love. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books