Gnome Alone in Carmel

Our dear friends Ann and John Gila-Firman of Palo Alto, as a prank, stole our gnome from the garden while Fred and I were vacationing in Europe, took photos of it around town and returned it. Upon our return there was a photo book in the mail with no identifiers.
Mystified, my husband called our local newspaper, The Carmel Pine Cone, and reported the incident, hoping to reveal the "culprits." Meanwhile our friends admitted the dastardly deed so the newspaper interviewed them to get the whole story.
The published article is included here. One night I could not sleep (caffeine-induced wakefulness), so I thought up verses to go with the photos and wrote them down the next morning.
My husband and I embellished the original gnome photos with others to catch additional notable sights in our beautiful village of Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Several years passed with the project on the back burner, and both John and my husband sadly died. I promised John in his last hours that I would publish the book and mention his primary role in its development...so here we are. Enjoy!