I must start out by saying I have never read a John Grisham novel until now...gasp. I've watched the movies, but never read any of the books. A novel without all the lawyer intrigue appealed to me, so I gave Grisham a shot. He truly does know how to tell a story, but this one needed something more.  
 
The novel takes place in the rural cotton farming country of Arkansas in the 1950's. Little Luke Chandler and his family struggle through another tough picking season with their hired hands. The rest of the Chandler family includes Luke's mother and father (who secretly want more from life than farming), Luke's pappy and grandmother (who could never think of doing anything but farming) and Luke's uncle Ricky (who is off fighting the war in Korea instead of starting trouble in his hometown). Luke is a bright 7 year old boy that dreams of escaping his life on the farm to become a baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals. He is devastated when the new hired hill people, the Spruill's, set up camp very rudely on his baseball diamond. Luke's baseball diamond is not the only thing the family ends up ruining. A group of hard-working Mexican migrant works also moved to the farm, where one bad apple spoils their bunch. I don't want to give anything away, but a dangerous man in each of these two groups start alot of trouble on the farm and in town. Trouble that ends in death and destruction.  
 
The other big point of intrigue in town revolves around a very poor share-cropping family called the Lathchers that live nearby the Chandlers. The Latchers have a full house of shoeless hungry children that Luke's kind mother takes food to on a regular basis since it is the "Christian thing to do." When the eldest Lathcher daughter, Libby, is rumored to be pregnant, the ladies in the Baptist church society put Luke's mother up to the task of finding out if the rumor is true and who the father is. After many trips to the Latcher shack, Luke's mother and grandmother are asked to help deliver Libby's baby. The birth not only rocks the lives of the Lathcher's but the Chandler's as well. The two families are forced to come together when a shocking secret is revealed.  
 
As for the title of the book, it revolves around a rather small portion of the story and is hard to quite understand the significance of it all. The youngest Spruill child, Trot, who is handicapped in some way takes a liking to Luke's family and begins painting their unpainted home (this is not a give away, it is made very clear in the book and is no mystery). The symbolism of this act is rather hard to get to the bottom of, but makes for a cute side story and helps end the novel...if you want to call it an ending. The ending truly leaves you hanging and it's not in a good way. I wasn't left wanting more, I just felt cheated by how it all ended. I was made to care about a few of the characters in the novel, but was not allowed to know what happened to them.  
 
At times there is much repetition in this novel, especially when it comes to the cotton picking scenes. I just wanted to tell Grisham that I get it already, they're picking cotton, it's hot and it's hard work. For several chapters he uses the same wording to describe different days in the field where the same things happen. It just felt like dead space. The intrigue that involves murder, illegitament children and strange house painting is intersting, but I never felt on the edge of my seat. My major complaint about these aspects of the novel is that there was never any real mystery involved. The answers were handed to me instead of me searching for them. Instead of giving choices of who killed who or who the baby's daddy was, they were made obvious. I don't like when writers hold back important information, but I felt like it didn't need to be all laid out so plainly. Especially with reading a Grisham novel I expected more mystery and intrigue. I also felt at times that he wrote Luke a little too intelligent and resourceful for his age. I just don't believe that a 7 year old boy in rural Arkansas circa 1952 could really have some of the thoughts, feelings and actions that he did.  
 
Yet the novel was still an enjoyable read and took me to a time and place I had never really thought about before. The characters are well plotted out and the dialouge is written well, there are just some unbelievable moments. It's worth a read, though, so give it a try.  
 
