painted house

The hillbillies and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, in early September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with two weeks to go, and the season seemed hopeless. Yet the cotton was up to my father's waist, almost over my head, and before dinner he and my grandfather could be heard whispering rare words. It might be a "bumper crop." In rural Arkansas, Luke Chandler, a seven-year-old farm boy, lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a small house that has never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres they rent, they don't own, and when the cotton is ripe, they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it. For six weeks, they pick the cotton, struggling with the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and sometimes each other. As the weeks pass, Luke sees and hears things a seven-year-old couldn't prepare for, and finds himself hiding secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the Chandlers' lives forever. "The Painted House" is a touching story of one boy's journey from innocence to trial, inspired by the personal experience of legendary legal thriller author John Grisham.