House of Sand and Fog

In this “page-turner with a beating heart” (Boston Globe), a down-on-her-luck recovering alcoholic and addict fights to save her California house. However, this becomes contentious ground when a recent Middle Eastern immigrant, a former Iranian Air Force colonel, decides to purchase the mansion in order to restore his family's honour. The woman's partner, a married police officer, goes above and above to capture her heart when he steps in. The enduring characters created by Andre Dubus III are flawed individuals searching for a little bit of stability as they go towards unavoidable conflict. Their tragic story, two decades after this book's first release, presents an incredibly accurate image of the nation we still live in today. The New Yorker called it a "affecting, subtle portrait of two hostile but equally fragile camps."