On a quiet summer evening in June 1990, Pico Iyer sat in his family home in Santa Barbara, California, when suddenly, he was surrounded by walls of flames five stories high.
Thirty-four years after that conflagration turned his life upside down, Iyer returned to Southern California to share how it transformed his life, nudging him toward what he now values — simplicity, silence, solitude and love. The novelist and essayist addressed about 80 people Tuesday at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, the very community devastated by the deadly Eaton Fire earlier this month.
