Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview… a recovering alcoholic who’s been living alone since her divorce. After falling behind on her taxes and neglecting the county’s warnings, her California home is put up for auction and purchased by Massoud Amir Behrani. The house is one thing that still gave her a sense of security and family. Now, struggling with addiction while working as a housecleaner, she’ll go whatever lengths necessary to get the house back.
Personality… depressed, unlucky, and dependent. Kathy seems to be followed by misfortune, though she invites a lot of it through her self-destructive behavior. She feels entitled to the house for no discernible reason, yet it’s hard not to sympathize with someone who struggles so much. She lives a loveless life, partly because of her struggles with addiction, and partly because she doesn’t feel like she deserves it.
Get to Know her in...
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Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.
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When Kathy, a young recovering alcoholic recently separated from her husband, fails to a open a series of tax letters that have been sent to her in error, the State of California seizes the house she and her brother have inherited from her father. The State sells the house at auction to Behrani, a former Iranian Air Force officer. Unable to parley his skills into a job in aerospace in the US, the house represents an entry into real estate and a passport to the future of his family and his own version of the American Dream. For Kathy, its loss is the last of a series of insults life has dealt her. When she becomes involved with a married policeman who takes up her cause, the stage is set for a gut-wrenching tragedy.
