Customer Reviews

Huckleberry Finn in Love and War: The Lost Journals

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Sherlock Holmes is one of the few fiction greats to pull off a sequel, climbing the unclimbable (we know full well that Watson can't see what's in front of his face) and leaving his old rival dead down below. Would that Huck had the same chance. As it is, by book's end it seems like everyone has shown up at this Old Home Week In The Wilderness but Aunt Polly and Injun Joe and Huck, who is already fighting with Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Abe Lincoln, Winfield Scott, most of the Union general staff and a Mysterious Sojourner for a little time on stage, has effectively been made a minor character. A shame, as Walker makes it quite credible that this unlikely riverbum has become not just a soldier but a trooper, not just a trooper but a Sergeant, and not just a Sergeant but a Regular. (Some will be surprised to find out in which army.)

Walker obviously knows his home turf and its history, and might well give us outstanding portrayals of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness. His characters aren't bad, ther are just too many of them here. But Huck, agreeable though he was, could only be pushed so far. If he's to live on in sequels, and certainly no character in American fiction has a better right to, let's let him exercise a some control of his life.

First, full disclosure: I wrote this. Somebody has to write the first review, so I'll do it. The way I told the story may be controversial: not from Huck's point of view but from the POV of an old friend who now has Huck's Journal and quotes from it--and other sources. So there's some cutting back and forth between the narrator's investigation of the mysteries and Huck's own story. I'm pleased with what resulted, and I'll enjoy hearing what reviewers think.
The book, I think, is the logical extension of what Twain had done in the immortal Huck: what would happen to Huck when America itself lost its innocence in Mexico and the Civil War? Surely Huck (and Tom, too) would have to make those choices. Twain, I think, realized that and shied away: he didn't know anything about the War. How would Huck maintain any kind of innocence under those pressures? Let alone his immortality? If you're interested Huck or in Civil War might-have-beens, you'll enjoy this!
DW