Narrow Escapes is a riveting, beautifully told story of Nayer's journey across continents, but also through layers of grief from a childhood trauma, as she learns to find her way home. I will not forget this book.

Katherine Seligman, journalist and winner of the Pen/Bellwether Prize for socially engaged fiction for the novel At The Edge of the Haight

As a poet and writer Louise Nayer has established herself as a singular voice of her generation.

The late Robert Creeley

Nayer takes us on multiple journeys, across Morocco and across America as she leaves the East and everything she knows. She also must take a more difficult journey: to deal with the effects of a childhood trauma. Suspenseful, fast-paced and an important story of a woman finding her inner strength.

Julia Scheeres, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land and the award winning A Thousand Lives

Louise Nayer plumbs the depth of her extraordinary life-traveling the world, facing love, death and destruction-to remind us of a simple truth: the intrepid heart is and will remain our greatest ally at a time that threatens to make calamity ordinary. Nayer shines forth with the light of her luminous and poetic past to bring us urgently needed perspective.

Roberto Lovato, Journalist and author of the memoir Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas

A haunting memoir tracing the path to artistic maturity, Louise Nayer walks readers through a journey fraught with danger and romance. Here, the act of writing poetry transforms grief into something transcendent. Suspenseful and beautifully written.

Lee Kravetz, therapist and author of many books including the novel The Last Confessions of Sylvia Plath