Read an excerpt from A
PAINTED HOUSE
A letter from
John Grisham
Dear Friends:
A Painted House is not a legal thriller. In fact, there is not
a single lawyer, dead or alive, in this story. Nor are there judges,
trials, courtrooms, conspiracies or nagging social issues.
A Painted House is a work of fiction. It was inspired by my childhood
in rural Arkansas. The setting is reasonably accurate, though historical
accuracy should not be taken too seriously. One or two of these
characters may actually have lived and breathed on this earth, though
I know them only through family lore, which in my family is a most
unreliable source. One or two of these events may indeed have taken
place, though I've heard so many different versions of these events
that I believe none of them myself.
Sincerely,
John Grisham
From the book jacket
of A PAINTED HOUSE:
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.
A Painted House is a moving story of one boy's journey
from innocence to experience.
