Title: HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG Author: ANDRE DUBUS Review By: Contributed By: F. Iman - Los Angeles, CA Andre Dubus 3d's second novel, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, describes in sensitive detail how otherwise normal people employ society's rules and systems to dismantle one another's lives -- it's about good people gone crazy. An Iranian immigrant, Col. Genob Sarhang Massoud Amir Behrani, accustomed to the trappings of power, now works at menial jobs. He seizes an opportunity to make money by purchasing, at a county auction, a nice bungalow in Corona, Calif. Kathy Lazaro, who lost the bungalow because of a bureaucratic tax error and whose husband has abandoned her, struggles to reclaim it. When a deputy sheriff named Lester Burdon becomes involved, he falls in love with Lazaro, losing everything else he values in the process. Dubus builds a sturdy narrative about how these characters' visions of the American dream (shelter, security, even love) collide and collapse. Set amid the frequent, flowing fogs and unsteady sands of Pacific suburbia, the novel examines what happens when ordinary men and women move across that tenuous barrier between the normal and the irrational. This is a story, told in highly visual, descriptive language, about how people you might choose to be your neighbors are repeatedly trapped by circumstances and transformed by events until finally they can -- and do -- destroy one another. Title: HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG Author: ANDRE DUBUS Review By: Janet Eaton - Los Angeles, CA In The House of Sand and Fog, Behrani, an Iranian immigrant to the San Francisco Bay area, who had been a colonel under Shah Pahlavi, struggles to maintain his status, despite his inability to get a job other than menial labor. He goes to excruciating lengths to conceal his current lowly state, even from his immediate family. Behrani dreams of salvaging his position by using his dwindling savings to buy a house, fix it up, sell it for a higher price, and repeating the process. In his efforts to accomplish this, he alternates between endearing tenderness for and resentment of his wife and children. The plot turns on this man's decisions, made under stress. The author, Andre Dubus, treats this vulnerable Persian character with compassionate understanding. In The House of Sand and Fog, Behrani, an Iranian immigrant to the San Francisco Bay area, who had been a colonel under Shah Pahlavi, struggles to maintain his status, despite his inability to get a job other than menial labor. He goes to excruciating lengths to conceal his current lowly state, even from his immediate family. Behrani dreams of salvaging his position by using his dwindling savings to buy a house, fix it up, sell it for a higher price, and repeating the process. In his efforts to accomplish this, he alternates between endearing tenderness for and resentment of his wife and children. The plot turns on this man's decisions, made under stress. The author, Andre Dubus, treats this vulnerable Persian character with compassionate understanding. (end)