In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the colorful life of the American outback in the 1840s is seen through the eyes of two fugitives carried away on a wooden raft by the mighty Mississippi River: one is the title character, who has escaped the unbearably boring, well-intentioned life of the Widow Douglass and the antics of his drunkard father, who has unexpectedly returned, and the other is his new friend Jim, Miss Watson's black slave, who is driven to flee by the prospect of being sold to the southern states. Life on the uninhabited Jackson Island, an encounter with a gang of bandits on a half-sunken steamship, wandering through cities and villages in the company of a pair of swindlers posing as a duke and a king, selling Jim into slavery and his 'heroic liberation' under the guidance of Tom Sawyer - in this series of adventures, Huck Finn imperceptibly matures, acquiring a new, more mature understanding of life...

Author: Mark Twain