#HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG ANDRE DUBUS FULL#
#HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG ANDRE DUBUS FREE#

His visions of a hefty profit float up into the fog. He would have to agree to sell the house back to the county for what he paid for it.

The county admits it made a mistake, but the sales transaction with Behrani is legal. Kathy really hates the idea of Colonel Behrani and his family in HER house. She starts thinking he is going to go back to his wife and kids. He starts thinking about how easily she fell into bed with him. Me and Lester.” They are screwing like bunnies and when they are together everything is fine, but when they are apart it becomes readily apparent that their relationship is built out of sand. ”I felt a little better as I pulled the T-shirt over my head and caught the faint scent of vomit and gun oil. In his mind he can already see the real estate empire that this first house will help finance. Luck never just happens, you have to give luck a chance to reward you. Now I say lucky, but I always feel we make our own luck. As it turns out he is also lucky that only two other bidders show up and he buys the house for a fraction of the value. Behrani is no exception and when Kathy’s house comes up for auction he takes the last of their savings and buys the house. It is no wonder to me that immigrants excel in the United States. Both jobs that are difficult to hire Americans to do at any price. Behrani works two crappy jobs, one picking up trash along the highways and the other as a late night convenience clerk. They did escape with some money, but much of that has been eaten up by keeping up appearances with the community of Persians in California. His wife has never really forgiven him for the circumstances that have made them immigrants in America. He was high enough up in the government to see his name appear on the blacklists.

He and his family were lucky to escape Iran when the Shah is ousted. This is where Colonel Massoud Behrani enters the plot.

#HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG ANDRE DUBUS FULL#

She is more like a full on raging forest fire. Kathy, as he soon finds out, is much more than a spark. They are best friends, comfortable with each other, and like a lot of people he interprets that to mean the spark is gone from the marriage. He has a wife and two kids, but every time he makes love with his wife it feels like he is making out with his sister. She can tell by the way he is looking at her that he is attracted to her. She meets Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon as he is escorting her off her property. The next thing she knows the cops are on her doorstep explaining to her that she has an order to vacate. She avoids, evades, and hits the escape hatch any time anything gets too real. The problem is that Kathy doesn’t have much experience dealing with anything. She goes down to the county offices and gets it “sorted out”, but she continues to get letters from the county office which she promptly throws away without opening.Īnybody who has ever dealt with any level of bureaucracy knows that issues are not always “sorted out” the first time. All is going okay until she has a dispute with the county over the house her father left her and her brother.

#HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG ANDRE DUBUS FREE#

She spends most of her free time watching movies, one after the other. She has been flying straight for a while. She is an addict who has been through a drug rehabilitation program. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living.” It is an American tragedy, and a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today.“And that's what I wanted: obliteration. House of Sand and Fog is a narrative triumph in which a traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story are turned upside down with brutal, heartrending consequences. 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. 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 his children. On a road crew in California, a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force under the Shah yearns to restore his family's dignity. And a small house will seem like the most important piece of territory in the world. In this page-turning, breathtaking novel, the characters will walk off the page and into your life. Tense with suspense from the first line, this is one of the great American realist novels.

House of sand and fog andre dubus