A young woman in California has lost her husband and now her house. The husband took off after just a couple of years of marriage. She lost the house A young woman in California has lost her husband and now her house. The husband took off after just a couple of years of marriage. She lost the house due to a bureaucratic snafu about over-due taxes. She really didn’t owe the taxes but she simply threw out mail without reading it, so now the house has been sold out from under her and auctioned off to an Iranian immigrant family. She can probably get it back but it will take years of litigation and lawyers she can’t afford on her salary. She cleans houses for a Merry Maids type outfit.
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As an ex-alcoholic and ex-cocaine user, she’s now living in cheap motels and heading back into a downward spiral. Then she meets a local cop and they fall in love. He falls harder than she does. But he brings two big problems: he’s married with young kids. And his idea of helping her is threatening the Iranians in various ways to get them to move out. He separates from his wife and they move into a friend’s hunting cabin.
All three major characters are deeply flawed. She’s a bundle of issues – shall we say a hot mess? The bullying cop admits to previously framing a criminal by planting drugs on him (although the cop thinks it was for a 'good cause' – he was a wife-beater). The Iranian homeowner was a colonel under the Shah and, although not in SAVAK, he hung out with those guys so we know he’s no prize.
The Iranian man is abusive to both his wife and son. And he is obsessed with making money off the eventual sale of the house. He refuses the county’s offer to give the house back with a refund of what he paid at auction.
The young woman and the cop are very Trump-like in their attitudes toward the immigrants; more-or-less: “Look at them ARABS in their fancy cars in MY house playing FOREIGN music and speaking a FOREIGN language in their fancy clothes” etc. The cop understands Iranians are not Arabs but she never gets it.
There’s some good writing, as in this description of a truck stop: “…dark place full of independent truckers coming off days on the road alone, men who wore their loneliness on their shirtsleeves like a badge in need of a polish.”
We’re treated to a lot of pithy Iranian idioms: “If there is no snake at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road.” I also think it’s one of the best depictions I have read of the trauma a woman goes through in having an affair with a married man.
I recall this book coming out years ago (1999) and seeing it in the top-10 book rack at every supermarket and drug store and thinking “that looks interesting.” And it is, but it’s also a bit slow in places. (They’re going back to the cabin AGAIN? To rehash everything once more?) Still a good read as it heads toward its tragic ending. It was an Oprah pick and was made into a movie in 2003.
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