The author of such knockout winners as "Runaway Jury" and "The Witness," "The Pelican Brief" and "The Firm," turns away from crime and law to view the cotton-growing world of 1952 Arkansas through the eyes of a 7-year old boy, the only son of a couple who want to move to the GM Nirvana of Flint but who are forced by poverty to live with the boy's grandparents. Blissfully disregarding the generous government subsidies which since the 1930s had protected farmers from overproduction and had even paid them not to grow at all, Grisham gives us a frozen-in-time "Tobacco Road," a world of agrarian workers from Pappy to young Lucas Chandler, broken by the weather, bad crops, low prices, and lack of hired help, with only Stan Musial (who's feet-together stooping stance at the plate made him hard to strike out) and the Cardinals' night games on the radio to keep their spirits up. They have almost no cash, drive broken-down vehicles, might well starve if the crop floods out--we're given the whole nine yards of poverty. But they do have their Baptist faith, which is hammered into them every Sunday by Rev. Akers. And they have the annual gypsy circus with its freak show and "Strong Man" and of course they have illegitimate babies. This is very much a formula novel: a son away fighting in Korea, a one-room schoolhouse not going beyond eighth grade, women canning for the winter, men sweating in the rows of cotton, fights between Mexican migrant workers and hillbilly casual labor...I've heard it all before, somewhere. I can identify with the feelings of a youngster forced to do backbreaking labor, which was my lot at the age of nine, but Grisham oversteps the boundaries of lurid. No typical farm family this. Coupla stars.

Grisham is the last word in legal fiction. His work is familiar but never gets old or tiresome. Somehow, he has dodged the "hack syndrome" unlike James Patterson, who can crank out a predictable thriller every 15 minutes or so, ditto for Stephen King.
Grisham has branched out before, particulary in "The Testament", but "A Painted House" is as removed from the legal thrillers as it can get.
A native Arkansan, Grisham winds the clock back to early '50's northeast Arkansas in the little village of Black Oak, which really does exist and is also famous for the rowdy rock band Black Oak Arkansas. The focus is on cotton and how the crop controls every facet of rural life in a part of the country that still lives on in a Depression economy.
The only flaws in this book are minor, but glaring to those who lived in the area at the time of the story, such as my mother-in-law, who recalls her days in the fields as a little different.
Grisham details hill people (Ozark mountain residents looking for work) and Mexicans coming up to harvest the cotton in between blistering heat and torrential rains. The only problem is that Mexicans, at least according to some locals, never came to Northeast Arkansas to work the fields, ever. Some "hillbillies" made the trip, but it was mainly locals.
Still, the story is great, the narrative superb, as seen through the eyes of a young boy, and the obvious respect Grisham has for the poor working class is admirable. It's a definite departure from the courtroom, but well worth the trip.