A Painted House

Title: A Painted House
Author: John Grishman
384 pages / 36 Chapters (Read digital version)
Date Published: February 2004
Book description: Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world.
A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born ... and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives — and change his family and his town forever....

So the synopsis does not give too much away but again. I read two or three books before by John Grishman and I really love them. Also this year I wanted to expand my reading a bit more so I will take up reading more genres. This is classifed as Historical Fiction and Mystery so let's see how this goes.

For starters I am not a huge fan of historical fiction or historical books in general not even in school really. And my knowledge about the way of life in anywhere other than the place I live in the present well.... let's summarize I am no sociology expert and cannot asses the accuracy of the portrayal of a small southern town of USA during the the early 50s. But in my opinion it does look likely that the people living in small very religious town had the mentality portrayed here.

The people come across as prejudiced towards, the poorer or people form other sections of their same county; they are even more prejudiced about people from other countries. They look down on the Mexicans as a lesser people in the way they assume them to simply want to work, being unclean and poorer than them.

They have very strong religious taboos. Look down on people even working on Sunday because it dictates the Sabath, the rest day. It is considered sinful to ignore, just as it is sinful to miss Church every Sunday and a bunch of other things... but when times call and their rightful way goes against something in their benefit they are willing to lie and look the other way, ignore it so it does not come to affect them negatively. It is such a hypocrite way of life, I have a strong dislike towards those kind of attitudes and yet, they sound so right. Plenty of people lived that way and some places people still do live in that archaic self-rightous state of mind, they condemn other for their sins yet they are hiding somethimes worse offenses about themselves. 

They teach their children the same "values" and they preach with example of when it is right  to follow some rules and when it's best if no one knows and you lie to keep up the good image others have of you and your family. It is the worst part that they believe themselves to be right. I lik the story, it is annoying in the fact that the people take decisions that I'm not confortable with and that even the main characters are to blame in acting so dishonestly. 

All in all the story is filled with drama being made simply because people can't mind their own bussiness, again I dislike the attitude but can't say it's wrong.


The book is well written, John Grishman does portray a realistic enviorement in a small town in my opinion of course. I gave it a 3 out of 5 stars because it was a good story, even if reading drama is not really my favorite thing.