This book is one of a few that every year becomes an instant New York Times Bestseller.
Percival Everett, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Southern California and “one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime,” has written another classic, “James: A Novel” (Doubleday, 320 pp., $28).
Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for an earlier work, Everett has used Huckleberry Finn in a new adventure told by enslaved Jim, who learns he is about to be sold and moved away from his wife and daughter in Missouri to New Orleans.Jim flees to Jackson Island from the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, on the Mississippi River to devise a plan. His buddy Huck Finn fakes his own death to get away from his abusive father, “Pap.” The two team up like in the original Mark Twain saga and begin their journey by raft down the Mississippi.
In Everett’s gem, his Jim wants to earn enough money to return and buy his wife and daughter out of slavery. Huck simply wants to find a ne...