Christopher Hudson found his Eden in a rambling house he shared with seven others on acres of rough hillside in Spring Street, California in 1976. There he realized his studies and his writings on paradise in western art and literature had been sadly lacking in sensual joy and beauty. 12 years later he returned to California to track down his old friends and to set their mutual theories and memories against the chastening reality of the present.
The author, a middle-aged English editor and journalist, takes a trip back to the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, where he spent an enchanting summer in 1976, researching descriptions of Paradise in Western literature and falling in love with a local student. He discovers- surprise!- that not everyone in the rambling house was happy and that his memory was faulty, or at least very selective.
This book could have been more fun had it been a little more thorough in the reconstriction of that post-hippie summer and less heavy on the bits and pieces of the author's scholarly research.