Exile in Eden

EXILE IN EDEN covers our lives as expatriate Norte Americanos in Andalusia, where we explored every corner of Spain, raised our three children and found ourselves. We arrived with children ages five, three, and one, two cats, a dog, and six hundred bucks to our name. Spain was our classroom as we unearthed international intrigue and Paleolithic digs. We followed the ferias, the corridas, rediscovering the Europe from whence we came. We spent six happy years at Casa La Chopera, overlooking the Mediterranean, before tourism reached the newly christened Costa del Sol. A planned international airport in nearby Malaga spurred us further inland. We found buildable land thirty miles from the nearest tourists and there we built Coritjo de las Yeguas, where we raised our family, lived and learned, worked and played for twenty-two years. During our travels throughout Spain, we collected over five thousand significant artifacts dating from Neolithic times to the fifteenth century, as well as some 400 pieces of early Spanish hand-hewn furniture and décor. In 1982, the Museo Hollander was born (finding it more reasonable to have the museum to store our collection, the Cortijo just couldn’t accommodate another bancal or mesa). Gino and I returned to the States 17 years ago. Our kids are all scattered with our nine grandchildren. Gino paints and I write and we pretend that life will go on forever. But it doesn’t really, does it? I’ve spent the last five years documenting those magic years long gone in poetry and prose.