It all started two years before I was born.

My parents fell in love with a dilapidated Victorian mansion in suburban Riverside. It had every old house problem imaginable. They bought it and decided to fix it up themselves. My dad envisioned it being one of the most dramatic transformations the village of Riverside had ever seen. “Make no little plans…” he wrote on the first page of his restoration notebook.

So began a 15-year project to restore the home to its original grandeur. The house was my playground. I slid down its bannister, made toys from construction materials, and built imaginary worlds in its many rooms.

That’s not to say the whole experience was magical. There was a darkness that lived inside the house. My memoir is a coming of age story about coming to realize something wasn’t quite right. That dreams and reality don’t always play well together.

So what happened? You’ll have to read my book to find out. :)