Huckleberry Jim

By Adam Nelson

Book Overview

A darkly funny 1991 road novel about two actors touring a stripped-down Huckleberry Finn through a hostile America--perfect for listeners of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Percival Everett's James.

Axel Emerson isn't chasing a dream--he's running from a body. After the sudden death of his estranged father, and the detective's calls that follow, a washed-up casting agent offers him an exit: tour the schools as Huck Finn in a stripped-down, two-man stage version of the American classic. It's 1991, and the country is cracking open.

His co-star is Moses Morton, a fifty-five-year-old Black actor cast as Jim--and from the first moment, Moses sees straight through him. Their road trip through hostile American towns becomes a crash course in race, history, and performative ignorance, recited from lines a white man wrote in 1884 about a country that hasn't changed as much as it thinks. When performance and reality finally collide, there's no script left to hide behind.

• Format: MP3 CD
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H7XYJ3RH
• ISBN13: 9798236008990
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Length: 1 Pages