Upon first looking into Grisham's 'A Painted House'

Perhaps it took me a little longer than most people to read John Grisham's "A Painted House."

I carry some slow-down baggage with me as I read. Not only do I follow the narrative, I study the techniques of the author.

When I ventured into short story and novel writing I meticulously studied how the author put the story together. What happened in the first paragraph? The second, etc.? When did he introduce the main characters? What was the narrative hook? Where was the first hint of where the author was going with the story? Where did the action start? How was the transition from episode to episode made?

I give Grisham an A+ in every category. Isn't that ridiculously absurd for me to grade Grisham?

Right in the first paragraph you get the setting. A cotton farm. The time, September 1953. And the hint there may be racial conflict in the hired workers. White hill people and Mexicans. The baseball Cardinals are mentioned and thereafter used as a transitional device to separate fast moving events. Quickly one is introduced to the poverty and other worries of the sharecroppers, the large role the churches have in a rural community and that the story is being told from the viewpoint of a 7-year-old.

Grisham keeps hammering on that facet -- a 7-year-old. I smile at that. Reminds me of Dave Barry's repeated sentence, "I am not making this up."

From then on there is fast moving action and dialogue which most readers like very much.

Throughout the harvest season, two months, there is an aura of suffocating heat and bone-weary tiredness which makes the reader FEEL, one of the three things that makes a good story. The often-mentioned fields of white cotton makes me SEE. The shouting of the preachers, the taunting voices at the ball games between the Mexicans and the white people, the swish of floodwaters ruining the cotton fields, the rip of a switchblade in human flesh makes you FEEL.

Grisham throws in another of the senses. TASTE. The vegetable from the large garden, fried country cured ham and sausage served at the kitchen table makes one rejoice that at least they had good food.

Terrible things happen during the short harvest. There are two brutal murders, runaways, stealing, illicit sex, shunning, etc. One begins to wonder how Grisham is going to pull all the loose ends together as the end of the book nears. What were the goals? A good cotton harvest? That didn't happen. To live in a painted house? The house did get painted but only on the day when those who wanted it so badly left. To escape from the cotton fields? That happened for the 7-year-old boy and his parents. Leaving the grandparents behind.

Slowly, at least in my case, the reader begins to think that Grisham wants to let his readers bring together the loose ends for themselves. Either that or he is laying a base for a trilogy: Luke's life in the big city. Luke's eventual return to the cotton country.

Grisham balances the good with the evil by pointing out that no matter how much the people detested some of their neighbors, they were always there to rescue them from harm, feed and clothe them and provide shelter and what service they could render.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.