House on Mariposa Drive: A Restoration Memoir

For fans of Frances Mayes and Cheryl Strayed, a Mexican American architectural designer’s memoir of restoring a 120-year-old California farmhouse—and her journey of rebuilding herself alongside it after battles with lupus, cancer, and divorce.

When Thelma Muro and her husband, Juan, stumbled onto Blue Hill—a long-abandoned 120-year-old Victorian farmhouse in Redlands, California—they knew the house would change their lives. But they had no idea how completely.

A Mexico-born architectural designer who had survived lupus, two breast cancer diagnoses, clinical depression, and divorce, Thelma had already spent decades rebuilding her career and her sense of self. But Blue Hill asked something more of her. As she brought a forgotten orchard back to life and peeled wallpaper from the walls of a house that had outlasted everyone who’d ever loved it, she also began the deeper work of excavating her own past: the small Mexican town she left as a child, the family she carried in her bones, the losses she had never let herself fully feel.

The House on Mariposa Drive is the story of two restorations running in tandem: first, a house brought back to life; second, a woman finally home. For fans of Under the Tuscan Sun and the quiet wisdom of Wild, this is a love letter to old houses, Mexican heritage, and the radical hope that the second half of life can be the most beautiful chapter of all.