Percival Everett · 2024 · river

Percival Everett's 2024 novel retells Huckleberry Finn from the view of Jim - here James - the enslaved man who flees down the Mississippi to avoid being sold. From Hannibal and Jackson's Island the raft carries him and the runaway Huck past St. Louis, misses the Ohio at Cairo in the fog, and drifts deep into the slave South, as James seizes the authorship of his own life.

1. 1
   Hannibal

   On the Missouri riverbank, the enslaved man Jim learns he is to be sold and separated from his family, and flees to Jackson's Island - where he falls in with the runaway boy Huck.

2. 2
   Jackson's Island

   The island in the Mississippi where Jim and Huck hide and then set off downriver by raft, Jim steering his own story rather than the one told about him.

3. 3
   St. Louis

   Past the growing city, drifting south on the current through fog and danger, the pair separated and reunited as the river carries them deeper into slave country.

4. 4
   Cairo

   The confluence with the Ohio, the turn toward free territory - missed in the dark and the fog, so the raft carries them on south instead of to freedom.

5. 5
   The Deep South

   Down into the plantation country of the lower river, through cons, violence and the daily peril of a Black man seizing his own freedom, toward the reckoning that ends the flight.