Plot

One of these pioneering figures, Purn Singh, arrived from the Punjab region of India during the early years of this century to southern California's desert region Imperial Valley. There, he settled with hopes of owning land. He and other Punjabi immigrants soon discovered, however, that in America they must learn to circumvent racism, miscegenation laws and even a mob of bloodthirsty Anglo farmers seeking vengeance for the murder of one of their own.

ROOTS IN THE SAND is a multi-generational portrait of the nearly 5,000 Punjabi men who settled in Southern California's Imperial Valley.The anti-miscegenation and anti-immigration laws prevented Punjabi women from joining them in the U.S. so these pioneers leased land and grew their own crops even as they married Mexican women and started new families.