An American House is set in a small Northeastern Iowa town during the 1930s. In his first novel, Paul Bland has written what appears to be a simple story on its surface, but the meaning runs deep. It is, in fact, about larger issues, an examination of the meaning of home, and too it reflects the social and political climate of the era leading up to World War II and the Holocaust. It is a beautifully written taleaabbreviated and metaphysical, spiritual, visually colorful and yet one-dimensional, and shaded with grays as a photograph might be.