Gives us the money or the parrot gets it!

[Ed Jewett]

This brings to mind the tremendous piece of work by a noted local author in these parts -- Andre Dubus III -- which found form in

• House of Sand and Fog (novel), a 1999 novel
  
• House of Sand and Fog (film), the 2003 film adaptation of the novel, starring Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.
  

I saw the movie first, and then bought the book, one of the finest things I have ever read, still on my shelf as a treasured holding. It marked this author as a student of the human condition par excellence. On the strength of that, I acceded when his next --- The Garden of Last Days (2008) -- jumped off the shelf at the local library.

I could not finish the book; it made my psychically and physically ill.