A Painted House

We read a few pages of this book in language arts class last year for a writing prompt. So part of this book was familiar to me, especially the part where Luke sees his first television. That's part of the reason I read this book in the first place, because reading only those few pages in class was going to bug me sooner or later, and the thrift shop had it for like 50 cents...
This is the first John Grisham book I've ever read, and what does my Grandpa say? "That book bored me to death. I had to quit halfway through." Thanks, really. That inspires a kid to read. I actually thought the book was good. Yes, a little long, but really interesting.
It was like one huge social experiment. You have the Chandler family, the ten Mexicans they hire living in the barn, and the Spruill family camping in their front yard. The Chandler family is a cotton farming family. They hire the Spruills and the Mexicans to help them pick. Then we have the neighbors, the Latchers, who are the 1950's equivalent of white trash. Ten kids in a shack of a house, no food to speak of, pregnant daughter who won't tell who the father is... Yeah. Good family life.
The story is told from the point of view of Luke Chandler, a 7 year old boy who is very naive but expected to pull his weight as far as cotton picking and farming goes. He also wants to be a baseball player, so a lot of the book has little baseball snippets throughout.
Luke discovers a lot of secrets, enough to make a kid want to 'fess up and run straight for under the bed. The Latcher girl's pregnancy? Well, the kid is now born and nameless, and the father may be Luke's Uncle Ricky who's away at war. The Spruill girl Tally? She may or may not be sneaking around with one of the Mexicans, Cowboy. And Cowboy? There's a whole other mystery right there...
So it's like social experiment meets soap opera. You hear situations like "Who's the father?" or "Their love can never be...", but you also see, "Whaddaya think'll happen if we throw a flood at this poor family?"
It makes for one interesting book, and I now like reading John Grisham books.