House of Sand and Fog

Andre Dubus III’s novel sets two desperate people on a collision course over a modest California bungalow. Kathy, a recovering addict, loses the house to a bureaucratic error; Behrani, a former Iranian colonel rebuilding his family’s dignity in exile, buys it at auction and stakes everything on it. As neither will yield, misunderstanding hardens into catastrophe. The book is a taut, tragic study of pride, home, and the American dream.