John Grishams book, A Painted House places the reader within the walls of a simple home on the cotton fields of rural Arkansas. Within the first few pages, the authors description of the setting quickly paints a picture of a hard working family and creates a shared concern with the reader about the familys struggle to meet the basic needs of life. The description of the dusty roads, the unpainted board-sided house, the daily chore requirements and their lack of excess cause the reader a reaction of empathy for the family. Although the story takes place in a dusty setting very unfamiliar to most readers, the storyline is timeless and universal. Most everyone has a desire to meet the basic needs of life, embrace their family ties, and make others and ourselves proud. The crux of this book is that it does an excellent job in showing the reader through others examples and hardships to persevere and never give up. The title of the book, A Painted House is based on the actual farmhouse in which the Chandler family resides. It was an old house. It was a fine house that had never been painted. For this particular family, paint - like eating meat with every meal - was a luxury. It was not a requirement to have a painted house. It was not a sign of laziness as the reader might initially expect. It was a sign of being frugal with money. In this bold example of persevering and never giving up, Mr. Grisham demonstrates to the reader that one cant have everything. The story is told through the eyes of seven year old Luke Chandler. Luke lives with his parents and grandparents on their rented farmland in the lowlands of Arkansas. It takes place during the harvest season for cotton in 1952. Like other cotton growers, these were hard times for the Chandlers. Their simple lives reached their zenith each year with the task of picking cotton. Its more than any family can complete by themselves. In order to harvest the crops and get pa...
