In his novel A Painted House, John Grisham tells the story of the
             events of one summer as viewed and interpreted by a young boy, Luke
             Chandler. The book presents a view of how a group of people interacts
             together: a cotton-growing share-cropping family, the transient workers
             they hire to help them pick the cotton, and their neighbors. The story
             delineates the social status and interactions between the various groups:
             sharecroppers, "mountain folk" who come down to help with the picking, and
             itinerant migrant workers from Mexico. In the process, Luke learns to look
             past surface assumptions about people. This is reflected by the emphasis on
             the surface appearance of his family's house -- whether it is painted r
             In the view of the people who inhabit Grisham's story, a painted house
             is superior to an unpainted one, and reflects increased status, because a
             a painted house can only be afforded by those who could spend extra money on
             paint instead of necessities. Luke's grandfather believes that painting
             one's house is a sign of vanity and a waste of good money, while John's
             mother has always dreamed of living in a painted house again someday. The
             reality is somewhere in between: with or without paint, the house is
             humble, but no one talks about paint's protective factor and that a house
             whose surface was protected by a good paint job would last longer than one
             that was not painted, or only painted to improve surface appearance.
             Luke Chandler has a passion for baseball and dreams one day of
             playing professional baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals, but all baseball
             is followed closely. In one scene, Luke watches a game between two church
             congregations, the Methodists and his own Baptist church. In this scene, he
             reflects the types of judgments regarding other people that those around
             him make: the Methodists should lose not base on their ball-playing ability
             but because of one tr...