A Painted House

John Grisham's story is inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, aged seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. 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...