Seven Palms tells the story of the Thomas Mann House in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles--the house in which the legendary German writer and his family passed their period of wartime exile between 1942 and 1952. Author Francis Nenik presents a detailed history of the house based on extensive archival research, narrating episodes from the Mann family's life in Los Angeles and introducing some new characters to the story--the people who built the house and worked in it.Recent photographs by Sebastian Stumpf offer a contemporary visual counterpoint to this history. In January 2017, Stumpf gained access to the vacant property, which had recently been bought by the German government, and captured it in an in-between state--deserted, and with little to suggest its illustrious former residents, but on the cusp of government-backed preservation.