Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley--a sequel to Tom Sawyer--the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of i[...]

Here is the beloved, high-adventure story of David Balfour, whose uncle cheats him out of his inheritance and has him kidnapped and sold into slavery. An odyssey ensues, including a shipwreck, narrow escapes, and desperate fighting.
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This cycle of coming-of-age stories tells of a spirited adolescent boy whose encounters with birth and death teach him about loss and profound emptiness, instead of giving him the more conventional hero's pragmatic "maturity."[...]