Erica Bauermeister's Epic New Novel, "No Two Persons"
When Erica Bauermeister’s first novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, was published, her mother, Rolling Hills Estates resident Dorothy Rechtin, threw a house party for local readers.
“It was wonderful to see all the love for books, and all the different ways readers could interpret the same story,” Bauermeister said.
It was meeting with groups like these, as well as book clubs, that led to the idea for Bauermeister’s latest novel, No Two Persons. The title comes from the phrase “no two persons ever read the same book.” The novel begins with a young writer, Alice. She has always played it safe with her stories, until a tragic event inspires her to create a powerful debut novel. Her words, in turn, go out into the world and touch the lives of nine very different readers — an exiled actor, an angry artist, a homeless teenager, the caretaker of a ghost town, a bookseller looking for love, a literary agent and her assistant. Each of them gets their own story, their own chapter. Each of them sees something different in the novel, and each one is changed in a different way. Together they remind us of the power of reading, as well as the ways we may be connected without our ever knowing.
“It’s my love letter to books and readers,” Bauermeister says, and the advance praise has been resounding. Liane Moriarty, author of Big Little Lies, writes “If you’re passionate about reading, I know you’ll be passionate about this book.” Nina da Gramont, author of The Christie Affair, concurs: “I am madly in love with this book. Erica Bauermeister has written a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.”
No Two Persons will be released on May 2, 2023. Bauermeister will be speaking at Vroman’s in Pasadena on May 15th at 7pm. More information, as well as ways to pre-order, can be found on her website: www.ericabauermeister.com.