“In these pages, Emily Rapp Black excavates the meaning of 'resilience,' putting aside brittle clichés about heroism and strength to uncover a richer, messier, more beautiful picture of what it means to live amidst both love and loss. This a lyrical, deep, funny, eyes-wide-open, ultimately comforting book. I adored it, and -- if you are searching for how to live in a broken world -- so will you.”

"Sanctuary opens up the space between life and death in order to show us how love gets born over and over again--a fierce and unflinching love, a love that has to travel trauma and truth to evolve. Emily Black's book is a precise and complex articulation of a journey that has nothing to do with the puny hero's journey. It's bigger than that. It's the story of the relationship between creation and decreation as it lives in the bodies of women. This book will give us better ways to tell the stories of motherhood, desire, despair, resistance and resilience. This book will change lives."

“Every once in a while, a book comes along that ushers us to the very center of a profound truth that we don’t so much learn, as recognize. Emily Rapp takes us there in SANCTUARY, reminding us in achingly beautiful prose that pain and pleasure, grief and aliveness exist not apart, but together in the dark matter, the liminal space we occupy when we do what the living do: we love, we love, we love.”

“Have you ever wished for a light to guide you when life asks you to bear what you think you cannot bear? Emily Rapp Black is that light; SANCTUARY is that guide. There’s no handbook for loss, but there are these pages and Rapp Black’s beautiful, breathtaking language that lifts and rises. I’ve thrown books about grief across the room in rage at their uselessness. Not this book. It will carry you. Rapp Black has again opened the door to her generous heart and let us in – and what beats there is holy and fierce and life-giving.”

“SANCTUARY is an absolute marvel—gorgeous and bold, astonishing in insight and unsparing in candor. With aching vulnerability and compassion, Emily Rapp Black maps the topography of heartrending loss and erects upon it a refuge of otherworldly resilience. As a writer, a mother, and woman, Black is a profound inspiration—not because she’s fearless but because she’s courageous. To understand the distinction, read this beautiful book.”

“Not since When Breath Becomes Air has a memoir conveyed such profound loss, alongside such luminous and life-affirming love. With exquisitely precise prose, Emily Rapp Black describes what it is like to mother a dead boy and an alive girl simultaneously, being pulled in both directions, juggling sorrow and guilt, but moving toward light and life. Sanctuary broke my heart and mended it, expanding it through truth and beauty.”

“This book is a wild masterpiece. It is about everything that matters: mortality, motherhood, desire, love, the body, art, writing, survival. Remarkably, the author is able to express the chaos of grief and anger without ever losing control. The fire of Frida Kahlo’s spirit courses through this book and twins with the author’s own attempts to understand her life, and survive. It is brilliant, furious, funny, gorgeously written, terribly sad and, without being sentimental, hopeful. I am sure that any feeling being will love and treasure this generous, remarkable book.”

"Emily Rapp Black's intimate grappling with the myths and fetishes surrounding Frida Kahlo feels like the walls of history somehow cracking open and allowing us to see the connections between women's lives, art, grief, sexuality, motherhood, self-presentation, love, and what it means to live in a complex body across time. Rapp Black honors this inspirational foremother with brilliance and respect, while remaining the book's compelling and magnetic heart."

“With endless intellect and intimacy, Emily Rapp Black brings us a book without parallel, a book that will become well-worn by readers who have passed it on, saying, here, you have to read this. In Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, Rapp Black scours and thinks and confides not in order to write an impossibly original work of art, though she has, but to survive all that has threatened her body and soul. Is it peculiar, then, to say that Frida Kahlo is one of the great loves of her life? For this is the story, and this is the bond between two artists in whom there is no hiding, just expressive, salvific brilliance. Read this. This book might just get you through.**”