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a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature?s most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn?s father.
Random House
February 2007
On Sale: February 20, 2007
Featuring: Huck Finn
304 pages
ISBN: 1400065917
EAN: 9781400065912
Hardcover
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Fiction | Historical
In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literatureβs most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finnβs father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twainβs classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.
Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless bodyβflayed and stripped of all identifying marksβdrifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victimβs identity, shape Finnβs story as they will shape his life and his death.
Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finnβs terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finnβs mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexityβnot an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.
Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of Americaβs past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.
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