Dan Walker answers the questions Mark Twain avoided: What if Huck really carries out his promise, at the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to "light out for the Territory" and is caught up, as he surely would be, in the national crises of Manifest Destiny and the Civil War? Twain himself got sixty-two pages into his own sequel and quit. Why? Was he bored? Or was he afraid of the implications? Would the choices of a real maturity--of love and war--be harder to finesse than those of childhood? What if Huck, Tom, Becky, and the rest had to make the kind of hard choices many Americans had to make when history called? For the Boy who once said "All right, then, I'll go to Hell"-what might that mean in the Valley of Mexico, parted from the love of his life, apparently forever, or behind Rebel lines in the Wilderness of central Virginia, with the duty to kill or capture old friends on the other side? How would our ageless hero do in such trials? Hell might be preferable. This revised Second Edition includes the originally intended "Epilogue," which was left out of the first edition, now out of print. Walker's own work experience--which includes ten years as a historian at Fredericksburg- Spotsylvania National Military Park and many years teaching English and creative writing--has prepared him particularly well to weave such a tale.

"Literary Spinoffs: Rewriting the Canon Re-Imagining the Community" explores the literary strategies, theoretical dimensions, and cultural implications of contemporary rewritings of nineteenth-century classics. By hooking on to powerful literary and cultural narratives, literary spinoffs seek to interfere with the cultural imaginary and revise the ways in which the cultural community constructs itself via formative narratives. Spengler offers in-depth case studies of prominent contemporary rewritings and the cultural work they undertake, while also examining the genre s particular aesthetics and effects. Through their intensely intertextual form, spinoffs raise urgent questions about the possibilities for participation in processes of cultural meaning-making and invigorate contemporary debates about intellectual property, cultural capital, as well as high and popular culture. "

"What if Huck, Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and the rest are caught up - as they surely would be - in the crisis of the Civil War? What choices will they make when history calls? For the boy who once said. "All right, then, I'll go to Hell," what might that mean in the Valley of Mexico, parted from the love of his life, apparenly forever, or behind rebel lines in the wilderness of central Virginia, with the duty to kill or capture old friends on the other side? How would our ageless boy do in such trials? Hell might be preferable"--Publisher's description.

What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan who flees from his village in the mid-1980s and becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys. Valentino’s travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)–the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins. Based closely on true experiences, What Is the What is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (often shortened to Huck Finn) is a novel written American humorist Mark Twain. It is commonly used and accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. It is also one of the first major American novels written using Local Color Regionalism, or vernacular, told in the first person the eponymous Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and hero of three other Mark Twain books.

Focusing on the overarching theme of religious satire in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this study reveals the novel's hidden motive, moral and plot. The author considers generations of criticism spanning the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, along with new textual evidence showing how Twain's richly evocative style dissects Huck's conscience to propose humane amorality as a corrective to moral absolutes. Jim and Huck emerge as archetypal twins--biracial brothers who prefigure America's color-blind ideals.

Special edition of Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel—featuring a new foreword by Marilynne Robinson and book club extras inside In this deluxe tenth anniversary edition, Marilynne Robinson introduces the beautiful novel Tinkers, which begins with an old man who lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past, where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature. The story behind this New York Times bestselling debut novel—the first independently published Pulitzer Prize winner since A Confederacy of Dunces received the award nearly thirty years before—is as extraordinary as the elegant prose within it. Inspired by his family’s history, Paul Harding began writing Tinkers when his rock band broke up. Following numerous rejections from large publishers, Harding was about to shelve the manuscript when Bellevue Literary Press offered a contract. After being accepted by BLP, but before it was even published, the novel developed a following among independent booksellers from coast to coast. Readers and critics soon fell in love, and it went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, prompting the New York Times to declare the novel’s remarkable success “the most dramatic literary Cinderella story of recent memory.” That story is still being written as readers across the country continue to discover this modern classic, which has now sold over half a million copies, proving once again that great literature has a thriving and passionate audience. Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations of a New England family: Enon and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers. He teaches at Stony Brook Southampton.