The Lure of a Land by the Sea: Venice Vignettes

Sometimes in dreams she glides across the silken lagoon in a gondola, or sways sinuously on the back of a camel making its way along the midway. Venice dreams. Delores Hanney burns with near-obsession for Los Angeles and vicinity and how it once was. She grew up there, arriving as a tiny toddler at the end of World War II. Almost at once it became a muse and a passion. During the past decade or so she has focused most fiercely on Venice and the opulent opportunities it presents for the chronicling of rather offbeat little histories. Her first book, Venice, California: A Centennial Commemorative in Postcards, was published in 2005. She is the chief staff writer for the quarterly journal of the Venice Historical Society, where most of the essays in A Lure of a Land by the Sea first appeared. She contributes to the Free Venice Beachhead (an alternative newspaper) as well.