A Painted House

Plot Summary
The story begins to unfold as Luke and his grandfather Eli, also known as Pappy, search for migrant workers to help them with the cotton picking. They initially consider themselves lucky to hire the Spruills, a family of "hill people," and a few Mexican migrant workers who annually come to the area looking for work.

Aside from working long hours under the hot sun in the fields, Luke's life is fairly idyllic until he sees the overly aggressive and mentally unstable Hank Spruill attack three boys from the notorious Sisco family, one of whom is beaten so severely he dies from his wounds. Hank arrogantly identifies Luke as a friendly witness who can support his version of the event, and the fearful boy backs up his story, although the adults in his life, including local sheriff Stick Powers, suspect he's too frightened to admit the truth.

When Luke sees Cowboy, one of the Mexicans, later murder Hank and toss his body into the river, Cowboy threatens to kill Luke's mother if Luke tells anyone what he saw. Cowboy and Tally, the teenage daughter of the Spruills, then run off together and are not seen again. Luke also learns that his admired Uncle Ricky, fighting in the Korean War, may have fathered a child with a daughter of the Latchers, their poverty-stricken sharecropping neighbors.

Grisham surrounds these dramatic moments with descriptive passages of life in the rural South and the ordinary events that fill Luke's weekly routine. His hard work in the fields is preceded by a hearty breakfast of eggs, ham, biscuits, and the one cup of coffee his mother allows him, and at day's end he's rewarded with an evening on the front porch, where the family gathers around the radio to listen to Harry Caray announce the St. Louis games. A devoted fan, Luke is saving his hard-earned money to buy a team baseball warm-up jacket he saw advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Saturday afternoons are spent in town, where the adults share idle gossip and serious concerns and the youngsters visit the movie house, while Sunday morning is reserved for church. A visiting carnival, the annual town picnic, and Luke's introduction to television - to see a live broadcast of a World Series game - are additional bits of local color scattered throughout the tale.

A flood devastates the family's cotton crop before the harvest is completed, and Luke's parents decide to travel to the city to find work in a Buick Plant, breaking a history of generations working on the land. The novel ends with Luke's mother smiling on the bus, having finally got her wish to leave cotton-farming. The book's title refers to the Chandler house, which never has been painted, a sign of their lower social status in the community. One day Luke discovers someone furtively has been painting the weatherbeaten clapboards white, and eventually he continues the job with the approval of his parents and the assistance of the Mexicans, contributing some of his own savings for the purchase of paint. The house's gradual transformation symbolizes the changes in the boy and his family as they prepare to enter a new phase in their lives. A Painted House is a based off of a young boys childhood on a cotton farm in Arkansas. The seven year old boy named Luke chandler a diehard St. Louis Baseball fan, is working as hard as he can to help his family raise enough crops to pay for there debts. They are hiring hill people and Mexican immigrants to help handle all the work but it just isn’t enough. One day they find a certain family to help live and work with his own family, this is good news to his parents and older cousins, but Luke knows something is fishy about the whole sitution. He soon witnesses one of the older boys from the new family violently beat three boys just outside the barn in which he usually goes to think, one of the boys was beaten so badly he died from his wounds. The attacker soon realizes Luke was a witness as the other two run away in fear. Luke, being young and very frightened is scared to tell anyone. No one suspects a thing until the county sheriff realizes there has been a murder and notices that Luke is acting differently. Grisham surrounds all these event dramtic life like situations that keep the readers on their toes. The book's title refers to the Chandler house, which never has been painted, a sign of their lower social status in the community. One day Luke discovers someone furtively has been painting the weatherbeaten clapboards white, and eventually he continues the job with the approval of his parents and the assistance of the Mexicans, contributing some of his own savings for the purchase of paint. The house's gradual transformation symbolizes the changes in the boy and his family as they prepare to enter a new phase in their lives. To find out more read the novel!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Painted_House#Plot

Endia.shepherd 20:43, 10 November 2011 (MST)

Characters
Luke Chandler—the youngest in the family and the protagonist of the story. Eli "Pappy" Chandler—Luke's highly respected and hard-working grandfather and patriarch of the family. He is a World War I veteran. Ruth "Gran" Chandler—Luke's quiet, conservative, and wise grandmother who prays for the safe return of her younger son, Ricky, from the Korean War. Jesse Chandler—Luke's father, who served in World War II (during which he suffered a debilitating injury), and struggles to help his father erase the family's debt. Kathleen Chandler—Luke's mother, who tends to the garden while dreaming of a better life in a suburban home with indoor plumbing and modern conveniences. Hank Spruill—the 'hill people' family's oldest son, boastful and quick to offer violence to anyone who offends him. Tally Spruill—the seventeen year-old daughter in the migrant worker family, who lets Luke watch her bathe and runs off with Cowboy. Trot Spruill—the youngest Spruill, who suffers from a crippled arm and begins to paint the Chandler's house. Trot, who is also mentally slow, is the only member of the family, next to his older sister Tally, whom Hank is never cruel to. Cowboy—the Mexican who carries a switchblade and is quick to use it. He eventually kills Hank in a fight and runs off with Tally.

Endia.shepherd 21:11, 10 November 2011 (MST)

Significant Quotes
== 1.	“Last year Juan Had revealed to me the pleasures of Mexican food, especially Tortillas. The workers ate them 3 times a day so I figured they must be good. I wanted to be like them, so I ate them anyway. “ -Page 58

2.	“My mother had been raised on a small farm at the very edge of Black Oak, so she was almost a town girl. She actually grew up with kids who were too good to pick cotton. She never walked to school; her father drove her. She had been to memphis three times before she married my father. She has been raised in a painted house.” -	Page 21 3.	“Miguel sent Roberto to the plate first, and I was sure that was deliberate, because the poor guy had never seen a baseball. He hit a lazy pop-up that my father caught at shortstop. “ -Page 119 ==

Adaptations
On April 27, 2003, CBS broadcast a television adaptation directed by Alfonso Arau for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Aside from advancing Luke's age from seven to ten and adding a brief scene at the end, Patrick Sheane Duncan's teleplay remained faithful to its source and frequently used Grisham's dialogue verbatim.

The cast included Scott Glenn as Pappy, Logan Lerman as Luke, Robert Sean Leonard as Jesse, Melinda Dillon as Gran, Arija Bareikis as Kathleen, Audrey Marie Anderson as Tally, Luis Esteban Garcia as Cowboy, and Pablo Schreiber as Hank.

Endia.shepherd 21:13, 10 November 2011 (MST)