He has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a hogshead. He's Huck Finn, a homeless waif, a liar and thief on occasion, and a casual rebel against respectability. But on the day he encounters another fugitive from trouble, a runaway slave named Jim, he also finds--for the first time in his life--love, acceptance, and a sense of responsibility. And it is in the exciting and moving story of these two outcasts fleeing down the Mississippi on a raft that a wonderful metamorphosis occurs. The boy nobody wants becomes a courageous human being with a sense of his own destiny.

Includes an Introduction by Padgett Powell
and an Afterword by Jayne Anne Phillips