House of Sand and Fog

Kathy is a recovering addict, whose primary addictions are cocaine and alcohol. At the start of the novel she is living in the Corona beach house that she inherited from her estranged father. She was recently abandoned by her husband Nick, following a series of disagreements in which Kathy asked him to have children. Although it is understated in the narrative, the depth of Kathy’s desire for children is apparent in her indulgent fantasies of becoming a stepmother to Lester’s children. Kathy is very aware of her recovery’s precariousness, and she maintains this awareness even as she breaks her sobriety and becomes disastrously entangled in the conflict over the house. Kathy is often her own harshest critic, which makes her feel powerless over her circumstances. This characteristic proves to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that pulls her deeper into emotional turmoil and personal ruin. This impulse is first signaled through her rejection of the Rational Recovery program, which teaches that “we’re not powerless, and thinking this just makes it easier to fail” (65). This approach leaves Kathy “cold,” and her rejection of RR’s model signals a broader reluctance to take control over anything that happens to her.

Lester is a deputy sheriff and field training officer for San Mateo County. He is married with two young children. He becomes infatuated with Kathy Nicolo, which leads him to leave his family and risk everything for a future with Kathy. Lester could be described as an idealist, although the ideals he aspires to are motivated by personal feelings that he finds shameful or embarrassing. Lester’s pursued police work to “not only clean up everybody else’s act, but to make the world safe again by doing so, to make it right once and for all” (235). His aspirations toward nobility and justice are tempered by deep-seated insecurity that people can see through his professional bluster and recognize him as a man “who has never been in a fight and come out ahead” (233). Lester’s need to prove his bravery sometimes leads to cruelty, to validate his authority to himself and others. This first manifests as minor escalations of policing situations, in which he finds “himself coming down harder on some arrestees than others” (232). This impulse toward cruelty in the service of justice culminates in Lester’s imprisonment of the Behranis and, ultimately, in Esmail Behrani’s death.

Lester is ruled by fear and regret. These two feelings work in tandem to control him, in many ways. This is exemplified in Lester’s feelings around the memory of his father leaving his family when Lester was young. This abandonment comes up several times in the narrative, first in the context of a fear that he will enact the same trauma on his own family that his father inflicted on him, having once vowed he “would take such good care of [his son] he’d never have to get […] desperate” (179). This fear calcifies into regret as Lester lies on his bunk in jail, imagining telling Carol and his children about his imprisonment. Even though Lester abhorred the very thought of abandoning his children, his decisions throughout the novel, which are almost all rooted in fear of one kind or another, tear him from their lives anyway.