The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.

As "wrote by Huck," the boys escape "sivilization" and "light out for the Territory, riding for the famous but short-lived Pony Express, then working as scouts for both sides in the war. They are suddenly separated when Tom decides he'd rather own civilization than leave it, returning east with his new wife, Becky Thatcher, to learn the law from her father. Huck, abandoned and "dreadful lonely," hires himself out to "whosoever." He rides shotgun on...

Before meeting Huckleberry Finn, Mary Jane faces deadly illness, treacherous landowners, and swindlers as she goes on her own thrilling journey down the Mississippi in pre-Civil War America. "In his classic work Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain briefly introduces "Mary Jane, the red-headed one." In no time Mary Jane becomes the girl Huck thinks about "a many and a many million times." Now author Hope Jahren has created for Mary Jane a life...