The Smiling Hill-Top, and other California sketches

A move from New England to Southern California gives Julia M. Sloane material for these informal sketches of family life, gardens and the coast. Two parents, two boys and two dogs arrive seeking rest and health, then find themselves putting down roots. Their hilltop bungalow overlooks the Pacific, but its lovely terrace and flowering courtyard share the page with practical troubles, including a car and a telegraph pole that spoils the view.

Sloane turns household arrangements and small frustrations into humorous episodes, while recording the pleasure of orange blossoms, sea air and rapidly growing plants. In the middle excerpt, she returns to the house for a week of solitude and preparations for tenants, finding a troublesome ring of keys and a garden transformed by growth. Readers interested in personal travel writing can follow how a new landscape changes the rhythms of everyday life, from family demands to the welcome freedom of an afternoon beside the waves.