Brownbag Book Club

Early in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the boys in Tom Sawyer's gang pledge to kill the families of any member who reveals their secrets. But one of them objects that Huck "ain't got no family." Until now. Jon Clinch's haunting first novel not only finds Pap [Huck's father], but in the life of this violent alcoholic it finds the spirit of a nation torn apart by conflicting racial passions. Clinch, who runs an advertising agency in Philadelphia, relies on Twain's details, sometimes borrowing whole scenes and patches of dialogue, but he reorders the characters completely, setting that eager little boy and his unconscious irony far into the background and forcing us to concentrate instead on the anguished man who sired him. Admittedly, part of the dark thrill here is "finding out" the back story that fans of Huckleberry Finn have long wondered about -- Who would ever have had a child with Pap? How did he end up naked and dead on that floating house? -- but this isn't just a creative appendix to an American classic. Clinch reimagines Finn in a strikingly original way, replacing Huck's voice with his own magisterial vision -- one that's nothing short of revelatory.