A Painted House

First Published: 2000
Drama
Pages: 384
Author: John Grisham

The breakdown:  A young boy named Luke is only 7 years old when his whole world changes.  He lives with his family on a small cotton farm and life is difficult.  One summer, his life is full of secrets, some big, and some small, but he carries all of them with him.


So I read this book because I needed something for the plane ride and my dad recommended it to me after he read it and loved it.  I was expecting a lot and was pretty let down.

I really didn't like the ending, but overall, thought it was kinda' boring.  I'll tell you the short version and let you decide.

A small town farming community is plagued with murders involving dangerous strangers in the early 1950's.  One family, the Chandlers, and especially the youngest Chandler, Luke is having a lot of bad news thrown on his shoulders and expected to keep it all to himself.  The family farms cotton and life is hard for them.  They barely have anything, but really just want to break even by farming and selling their crop.  In one house lives, Luke, his parents, and his dad's parents all together.  When picking season comes they need a lot more hands to help out before the winter comes.  They hire what they call the "hill" people who come down from bigger towns up north to make some extra money.  The family they hire are called the Spruills and they make a camp on their front yard for the season.  They also hire the Mexicans.  They live in the Chandler's barn and there are 10 of them.  Within the group of the Mexicans is a dangerous man named Cowboy who carries a switchblade and doesn't talk much.  Luke tries talking to him, but gets some bad vibes off him and stays away.  Within the Spruills, there's a dangerous teenage boy named Hank who never knows when to quit.  He's got a mean spirit and Luke stays as far away from him as possible.  But within the Spruills, is also Tally a teenage girl that Luke is in love with.  She gets him to go on long midnight walks with her when he's not supposed to leave the house, but he'd do anything to spend time with her.  Eventually, in town, on a Saturday night, a fight breaks out with some really nasty brothers.  Pretty soon it's 2 on 1 and Hank steps in to get the town boy free of the 2 mean brothers.  After he slinks off, he fights the 2 brothers, and then a third one joins in.  Problem is Hank never stops fighting even after the brothers are all down and he takes a 2x4 to one of the brothers and kills him.  Luke does not want to talk about this to anyone as Hank lives on his farm and if the police arrest him, he knows the rest of the family will leave and the Chandlers will be very short handed picking cotton.

I won't bother telling you the rest.  It's continually a boring book (to me) where you expect more of the story and it just never appears.  The ending is a bit open where you're not sure what's happened with certain characters and that really bugged me.

2 out of 5 bookmarks for being well written, but the characters and subject matter are just not interesting enough for me.  I say skip it.