by Andre Dubus III
W.W. Norton & Company, 1999, 365 pages

“House of Sand and Fog” shows what happens when good intentions butt heads and evolve into dubious decisions and fateful reactions. The central characters all have reasonable goals and desires, but they all confront problems that are largely beyond their control. The desperate leaps they’ll take to protect what they have and pursue what they think they’re owed threaten to collapse their worlds.

The novel alternates between the first-person perspectives of two key characters. The first is Amir Behrani, an Iranian immigrant working as a trash collector and convenience store clerk in California. Behrani had been a wealthy and respected colonel in his home country, but was forced to flee with his family when the revolution put their lives in imminent danger. In the United States, he struggles to maintain his dignity and regain the respect of his wife, son and recently married daughter.

The other is Kathy Nicolo, a former alcoholic and drug abuser who’s hit a patch of bad luck. Her husband suddenly deserts her, and, due to a mistake at the county tax office, she loses her house, which she had inherited from her late father. She’s forced to hole up in crummy motels, eking by on the wages of her housecleaning business, while she figures out how to get her house back.

When Kathy’s house goes up for auction, Behrani sees an opportunity to restore his livelihood through the real estate market. He purchases the house and promptly moves in with his wife and teenage son Esmail, intending to fix it up and resell it at triple the price he just paid for it. Behrani knows nothing of Kathy, or the fateful error that drove her out of the home he now occupies.

But Kathy does not intend to give up her house without a fight, and when traditional legal avenues prove inadequate, she stoops to less orthodox methods, showing up on the property to confront the new owners. Just as Behrani knows nothing about Kathy, nor does she know anything about this foreign family that’s taken over her home.

Kathy also begins an affair with a married deputy sheriff named Lester Burdon, who has problems of his own. He falls headlong for the attractive Kathy, but is conflicted about leaving his wife and two young children. As Lester becomes entangled in Kathy’s campaign to win back her house, he puts his own job in jeopardy.  

Kathy, Lester and Behrani are three well-meaning individuals whose conflicting self interests pit them against each other, while they stubbornly refuse to understand one another. Andre Dubus III masterfully builds tension as the story unfolds and good intentions mutate into abhorrently misguided acts.

The characters’ inner conflicts are illustrated poignantly by Kathy toward the end of the book, after she’s been berated by a deputy sheriff and then consoled by a compassionate nurse: “Maybe I didn’t deserve the deputy’s judgment of me for things I never did, but now I felt even more that I didn’t deserve the warmth the nurse just showed me, holding my hand like I was a victim in all this. Because I knew that wasn’t true. Neither picture of me was true.”

Dubus’ writing style builds in intensity as the book progresses. Initially lacking in linguistic fireworks, his writing reaches breathtaking crests as the novel approaches its climactic moments. But don’t hold your breath for a rosy ending.

Andre Dubus III is actually local to the Seacoast, living in Newburyport, Mass. His late father, Andre Dubus, is widely recognized as one of the greatest American short story writers of the 20th century (the elder Dubus died in 1999, the same year his son’s most famous novel was published). The younger Dubus, too, has authored numerous short stories, as well as the 2008 novel “The Garden of Last Days.”

“House of Sand and Fog” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1999 but lost out to Ha Jin’s “Waiting.” The book was made into a 2003 movie starring Jennifer Connelly as Kathy and Ben Kingsley as Behrani.