Finn.

Clinch, Jon (author).

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In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim find Pap Finn’s body in a house floating down the Mississippi River. Riddlesome objects, such as a wooden leg and two black cloth masks, lie scattered about the room, the walls covered in cruel, illegible scrawlings. Using this scene as a point of navigation, Clinch gamely sets about reconstructing what led to the man’s premature—and perhaps well-warranted—death. Finn remains the lowest sort of a man, as evil, alcoholic, and bitterly racist as he was in Twain. The boldest departure here, then, is of Finn’s incongruous lust for black women. He makes a prisoner/mistress of an ex-slave and conceives with her a fair-skinned child. Thus, Huck. By and by Finn would rather guzzle 40-rod whiskey in a moonshiner’s woods than raise the child, and when he tires of the woman, the easiest way to rid himself of her is also the bloodiest. This is a bold debut that takes a few tentative steps in tandem with the familiar Twain, but then veers off dexterously down a much more insidious, harrowing path.