Coming of Age, United States, Contemporary, Literary, Legal, Suspense 

"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 from author 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. This is a moving story of one boy's journey from innocence to experience. 

Genre/Form: Detective and mystery fiction
Bildungsromans
Baseball stories
Historical fiction
Domestic fiction
Fiction
Mystery fiction
Coming of age stories
Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Grisham, John.
Painted house.
New York : Doubleday, 2001
(OCoLC)606545617
Material Type: Fiction, Juvenile audience, Internet resource
Document Type: Book, Internet Resource
All Authors / Contributors: John Grisham
ISBN: 038550120X 9780385501200 0375431012 9780375431012 0385501218 9780385501217 044023722X 9780440237228 0613494512 9780613494519 044029598X 9780440295983 0385337930 9780385337939
OCLC Number: 49559833
Performer(s): Read by David Lansbury.
Description: 388 pages ; 25 cm
Responsibility: by John Grisham.