House of Sand and Fog

On a road crew in California, a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force under the Shah yearns to restore his family's dignity. When an attractive bungalow comes available on county auction for a fraction of its value, he sees a great opportunity for himself, his wife and children. But the house's former owner, a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck, doesn't see it that way, nor does her lover, a married cop driven to extremes to win her love and get her house back. These are people with ordinary flaws, people just looking for a small piece of ground to stand on, driven by the same needs into inevitable conflict - a conflict in which even the reader, rooting for all of them, has no safe haven. House of Sand and Fog turns both the traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story upside down with a heartending outcome, in a masterstroke of American realism and Shakespearean consequence.