HUCK OUT WEST

Huck Out West is a sequel to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that only Robert Coover could write. Following Huck west as he rides with the Pony Express, mines for gold, and lives with the Lakota; the novel is a tribute to an American master by one of America’s boldest novelists. Featuring appearances by Tom Sawyer and Jim, the novel is a madcap adventure that’s sure to please any Twain fan.

At the end of Huckleberry Finn, on the eve of the Civil War, Huck and his pal Tom Sawyer “light out for the Territory” to avoid “sivilization.” In Robert Coover’s vision of their Western adventures, Huck and Tom start by joining the famous but short-lived Pony Express. Tom becomes something of a hero and decides he’d rather own civilization than escape it, returning east to get a wife and a law degree. But Huck stays alone in the Territory; he guides wagon trains, scouts for both sides in the war, wrangles horses on a Chisholm Trail cattle drive, joins a bandit gang, finds an ill-fated pal in an army fort and another in a Lakota Sioux tribe, and eventually finds himself in the Black Hills just ahead of the 1876 Gold Rush. In the course of his adventures, Huck reunites with Tom, Jim, and Becky Thatcher and faces some hard truths and harder choices. Robert Coover has published fourteen novels, three short story collections, and a collection of plays since The Origin of the Brunists received the The William Faulkner Foundation First Novel Award in 1966. He has taught at Brown University for over 30 years, where he established the International Writers Project, a program that provides an annual fellowship and safe haven to endangered international writers.” He lives in Barcelona.