Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini’s fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tells the compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the “privilege of love.”

A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the acclaimed author of On the Road “In many ways, particularly in the lyrical immediacy that is his distinctive glory, this is Kerouac’s best book . . . certainly he has never displayed more ‘gentle sweetness.’”—San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac’s alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur “reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion.”

Sex, drugs, radical environmentalism, communal drumming, wild dancing, nature worship and raging bonfires: Lara is thrown into the cauldron of the counterculture. Ensnared by affection. By dependency. By the ancient fear of being alone. Lara, a young woman in her early 20's, finds herself in California traveling with two men: a hobo street musician named Leatherwood and Paul, an escapee from Graduate School obsessed with the writings of J. Krishnamurti. Lara is romantically attracted to both men, but both are leading her away from her goal: return to normal society, get her college degree and begin her career. Lara makes the fateful decision to go with the two men to The Gathering at Big Sur, in the mountains near the California coast. In Lara's humorous skeptical voice we share a young woman's struggle to find personal freedom and independence. Lara tells a story seething with action and emotional conflict. Only by following her inner voice will she escape from a desperate situation. The Gathering at Big Sur is Book Two of the trilogy, A Pilgrimage to Ojai. Book One, narrated by Leatherwood, is titled The Great American Wagon Road (also available through Virtualbookworm.com). And Book Three is Paul's Ojai Journal. Each book is complete unto itself. However the three together form parts of a whole powerful story.

Kaffe Fassett comes home to Big Sur each year to paint still lifes with Erin Lee Gafill. This book chronicles a decade of creative conversation between these two award-winning artists. This book serves as a catalog for the Color Duets show at the Monterey Museum of Art, summer 2020,

In his great triptych "The Millennium," Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. In his great triptych “The Millennium,” Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. Whence Henry Miller’s title for this, one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller’s life on the Big Sur, a section of the California coast where he lived for fifteen years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place—one of the most colorful in the United States—and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (and writers who did not write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (and the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children and adult innocents; geniuses, cranks and the unclassifiable, like Conrad Moricand, the “Devil in Paradise” who is one of Miller’s greatest character studies. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy and brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book—the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints and clichés of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.