Mozart in the Garden

From the Ashes of Fruit Trees Grew Today's Silicon Valley


Thousands of cookie-cutter homes for high-tech workers sprouted from the funeral pyres of a vanishing way of life as acres of lush fruit trees were bulldozed and burned to create today's Silicon Valley.


One of the children who grew up in this new suburbia in San Jose, California, was Tom Liggett, a neglected, unwanted child of dysfunctional (that's being kind) parents, who befriended the "witch" who lived in the Spanish cottage on the hill.


Their unlikely friendship and Tom's adventures are told in this unforgettable memoir. It's a tale of lost dreams, boyhood innocence, and two remarkable characters in midcentury California history.


BONUS story


A stunning story-within-a-story recounts the life and times of Faye Wolfe, the last first-person account of a survivor of the Galveston hurricane in 1900, the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and her connection to the Spanish-style architecture of the region and the sordid history of Silicon Valley-long before it was ever Silicon Valley-as told to an eleven-year-old boy in this, his coming-of-age memoir.

Tom Liggett is one of the world's foremost experts on roses. He founded the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, the second largest public rose garden in the world. This memoir is his third book.