Dreamer in the Fields

John Hill, the sixth of ten children born to alcoholic parents, recounts the hardships of his life as a child migrant farm worker. He tells of the back-breaking task of picking fruit, vegetables, and cotton, under the harsh California sun; living in filthy migrant shacks; losing months of schooling each term; of parents who constantly drank up all the family's earnings and engaged in violent fights; of a mother who tired of her husband's abuse and abandoned the family. Despondent over the poor quality of his life, Hill, only 8, asks God to change his circumstances. A divine visitation does just that: his father is jailed, and he and his siblings become wards of Fresno County and are placed in what Hill regards as a wonderful foster home. Hill delights in the change. He revels in the normalcy of his new life away from the fields, finds comfort in the requirement to attend church and school, and flourishes educationally.