Mark Twain's second book, "Huckleberry Finn" came as something of a sequel to his ever-popular "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and it provides a similar mix of heady southern atmosphere, child-like larks, and fantastic prose.
Like his earlier book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is firmly moves around the atmosphere of social structure of eighteenth century life by the Mississippi river. A beautiful novel of fun and great beauty has been a must-read for adults and children for more than a century.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn return us to the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, and its opening pages reacquaint us with the characters that we met in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finn, who once a child of the river, found a robber’s loot, and now had quite a large amount of money held in trust at the bank. He has been adopted by an old widow, and has been forced to go to school, keep clean, and do all the things that a respectable boy should.
However, such a veneer of respectability does not last, when Huck's father Pap returns to town claiming custody over Huck. A drunk and a never-do-well, Pap often beats Huck and locks him in a cabin when he goes out drinking and so, in an attempt to escape, Huck fakes his own death using pig's blood and runs away to an island in the center of the river. After a few days of living rough he meets an escaped slave by the name of Jim and they join forces, living lives close to nature. However, the island could not hold them forever, and when Huck overhears that Jim's owners are planning to look for Jim on the island, they both escape traveling on a log raft down the river.
On their journey they have a number of runnings with various river folk including a gang of robbers whose loot they managed to steal, and a group of slave-hunters whom Huck lies to in order to save Jim. Finally, in the dark one night, a large steamer collides with the raft and, abandoning ship, Huck and Jim are parted. However, they are not parted for long, as Jim finds Huck and gets him out of a tight spot when he is caught up in a gun battle between two warring southern families.
Returning to the river, Huck and Jim get mixed up with two small-time con artists going by the names the Duke and the Dauphin, who get attempt a number of scams at the towns they come across along the river . However, this agreement comes to an end when the two men betray Jim. Huck swears to help him, and is helped in this endeavor by Tom (who coincidentally turns up when he goes to visit his aunt and uncle).
The escape goes badly however, when in the process of breaking Jim free, Tom is shot in the leg. Caring more for the boy than his own freedom, Jim gives himself up and is once more put in chains. However, when Tom awakes he explains that, in fact, Jim is a free man (having been freed months earlier in the will of his recently departed owner). On their return to St. Petersburg, Huck's father is revealed to have died, and Huck once more faces the prospect of being "sivilised" this time by Tom's Aunt Sally. He says no thank you, and heads off on his adventures once more.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a boy's own story told at a wonderful pace. It should be an instant recommendation in any list of great American literature.
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