When
Warren Ziller moved his family from Wisconsin to the West Coast, he hoped to
exchange a comfortable Midwestern life for an even better one in
California. But his wife and children adapted
to life in Southern California with varying degrees of success. Seventeen year
old Dustin fits right in. He becomes that stereotype of a 1980’s California
adolescent: a handsome surfer and garage-band musician. But his brother and
sister, eleven year old Jonas and sixteen year old Lyle, don’t fit in quite so
well. Warren’s wife, Camille, works for a small film company and tries to
maintain a normal family life. But she worries that her husband is keeping a
secret from her and that secret is an affair. Warren is keeping a secret from
his entire family, but it is not an affair.
His secret is possibly even more destructive. He has risked and lost all
the family’s wealth on a failed housing development in the desert. While the
family struggles with their problems, big and small, an actual tragedy occurs:
their gated-community house explodes and Dustin is badly injured and
disfigured. Within a year they are the only family living in Warren’s failed
development, forced there by poverty. Eventually they adjust to their new
circumstances, but the family cannot hold together. Model Home by Eric
Puchner shows a family broken by mistakes and bad luck. It can happen to anyone.
