La Granja (2001)

Remember that thing I said about Koontz? Yeah, same goes for this book by Grisham.

The following might have hated it, but this was a work of art. ( )

arkansas cotton farmer, hired help, unpainted house, hard times. ( )

Interesting and unique book by John Grisham. Totally different from anything else I have read by him. ( )

"The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop."
Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it. ( )

Het is 1952. De zevenjarige Luke Chandler groeit op in Black Oak, een gehucht in Arkansas, waar de boerenbevolking het hoofd boven water probeert te houden met de katoenteelt. Het is een hard bestaan en de kleine Luke moet al snel meehelpen als op de velden van zijn ouders en grootouders - erfpachters, zoals de meesten - de katoen rijp is om geplukt te worden. Oogsttijd betekent het einde van de rust in Black Oak, dan overstromen seizoenarbeiders het gehucht. Ze komen elk jaar weer, op zoek naar werk: de mensen uit de heuvels en de Mexicanen.