A Painted House

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - A moving story of one boy's journey from innocence to experience

The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a good crop.

Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.

For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever.

Author: John Grisham
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Published: 02/06/2001
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.44lbs
Size: 9.55h x 6.48w x 1.33d
ISBN13: 9780385501200
ISBN10: 038550120X
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Thrillers | Suspense
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Coming of Age

About the Author
John Grisham is the author of The Brethren, The Testament, The Street Lawyer, The Partner, The Runaway Jury, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, and A Time to Kill.