Do you know the way to San Jose?

In the years just before the Santa Clara Valley morphed into Silicon Valley, it was a sleepy agricultural basin dotted with cherry orchards. Carol Sveilich’s youth in San Jose was a combo platter of glass walls, cool music, useless gadgets, groovy neighbors, and worry. And, oh yes—sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.  

If you were to scoop equal parts Rocky and Bullwinkle, Groucho Marx, Dave Brubeck, and The Beatles into a Waring blender, then pour the concoction into a punch bowl, you’d have real trouble. And indigestion. And likely an arrest for manslaughter. But you’d also have a taste of the author’s life growing up in the midst of the 1960s Bay Area counterculture.  

Two reluctant parents from New York City, who loved a weekend party, every weekend, plus two kids on the loose equaled too much distress and plenty of adventures. The decade was filled with dreams and a distrust of the establishment, while popular culture overflowed with patchouli incense, psychedelic music, florescent posters, love beads, and TV dinners in aluminum trays.  

In Reflections from a Glass House, the indelible memories of fumbling through school and the passage through adolescence near the “City of Love” are masterfully awash with comedic prose, amusing storytelling, and gut-wrenching recollections. Sveilich writes with observant precision about nostalgia, the highs and lows of youth, and the darkness of growing up in a family of disconnected souls that had humor as its connective tissue. 

While each member of Sveilich’s nuclear family seemed to reign from different solar systems, they also shared a quirky home in a distinctive and progressive neighborhood of unique midcentury modern houses called Eichlers. These were futuristic but affordable homes constructed of glass walls, an open atrium in the middle of the dwelling, and ceiling globes that hung like planets. The author’s own Eichler was filled with cats, chaos, and secret liaisons.  

Sveilich’s candid, touching, and often hilarious life story wraps around her family’s home and neighborhood in a time filled with both angst and amusement. Baby Boomers will recognize themselves in Sveilich’s mirror and young people will learn what it was like to try to “get back to the garden”. 

Whether you grew up in the 1960s, or if you lived through the decade but never really grew up, you’re going to enjoy Sveilich’s ride through the music and pop culture scene with her family of misfits and friends by proximity. With the forensic eye of a counselor and the delicate heart of a complex youngster, Sveilich’s story and musings are both heartbreaking and hysterical.