"The kind of book you read slowly because you don't want it to end...John Grisham takes command of this literary category just as forcefully as he did legal thrillers with The Firm....Never let it be said this man doesn't know how to spin a good yarn."-Entertainment Weekly
Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers-and two very dangerous men-came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke's world. A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born...and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives-and change his family and his town forever....
"Characters that no reader will forget...prose as clean and strong as Grisham has yet laid down...and a drop-dead evocation of time place that mark this novel as a classic slice of Americana."-Publishers Weekly
"Some of the finest dialogue of his career...Every detail rings clear and true, and nothing is wasted."-The Seattle Times
A MAIN SELECTION OF THE DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUB, THE LITERARY GUILD, AND THE MYSTERY GUILD