CHILDREN OF ALISO is a memoir of the pioneering Thurston family who settled and homesteaded 152 acres of land in Laguna Beach's Aliso Canyon in 1871, transforming its barren wilderness into a sustainable farm. It narrates the family's personal stories, from initial isolation to early Laguna neighbors, through the 1880s real-estate boom and bust, and 1890s economic downturns. Detailed descriptions of the region's flora, fauna and beautiful landscapes provide a backdrop to accounts of their daily lives, relationships and hardships. It recounts their lives on the Aliso farm, and the early years of school and work opportunities in neighboring communities.

Harriet Thurston Buchheim Mather, one of fifteen Thurston children, describes CHILDREN OF ALISO as "the story of a single family of pioneers taken from among the many who formed an integral part of the romantic Southland in days that are forever gone-gone, not simply from the standpoint of the passing of time, but of the vanishing of an era."