House of Sand and Fog
Kathy Nicolo’s life in the foggy San Francisco Bay Area was not going well. Her husband Nick had left her shortly before she became homeless for not paying taxes. The house her father had bought her had been repossessed. Her only hope was Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon, who became attracted to Kathy while serving her eviction notice.
The house is auctioned off by the county tax collector’s office to Colonel Behrani and his family. They are immigrants from Iran, and the Colonel is obsessed in regaining the social dignity his family once knew there.
The cause of the struggle between Kathy, her deputy sheriff boyfriend, and the Behrani family can be blamed on the county tax collector’s office, who had mistakenly been charging a business tax on the wrong house.
Les Burdon, instead of waiting for legal action against the tax collector to develop, tried to use his deputy sheriff rank to scare the Behranis out of the house. The problems from this soon get out of hand, pitting innocent people against each other because of an error made in a tax collector’s office.
Andre Dubus III develops his characters well through avant garde dialogue. The common, realistic controversy he creates ends with no winners. The copyright date for House Of Sand And Fog is 1999.