Rich in color and humor, this great novel follows the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and vividly recreates the world, the people, and the language that Mark Twain knew and loved from his own years on the frontier of the Mississippi. 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