the British painter and Los Angeles resident David Hockney would call Malibu “the edge of the Western world.”

“L.A. is not a city that presents itself to you,” Sam Sweet, a local amateur historian, told me one gray afternoon. “It rewards you to the degree that you’re willing to unlock it. That’s always been the beauty of the city for me.”

firmly entrenched by the 1910s: its reputation as a center of unorthodox social thought, spirituality, and healing. Perhaps as a result of the psychological dislocation endemic in a city dominated by newcomers, the temptation to fill the void of disconnectedness with exotic faith and unconventional philosophy seemed irresistible to many who arrived