On the face of it, a book that can be described in a single sentence. What would the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn look like if it were written by Huck’s enslaved friend and protector, Jim?
Everett uses the narrative arc, plot details, and characters from the original, but Jim, in this telling is not simply a slave. Rather, he is an enslaved man complete with emotions, anxieties, family, and the unremitting fear of white citizens. He is well read in the philosophers of his time — Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau — and so bilingually fluent he can speak the expected slave in front of whites.
The dehumanization of enslaved people is brought into clear focus while Huck and Jim run through the adventures laid out by Mark Twain. Blacks are beaten like animals and an absence of subservience can be trained into slaves by torture. Jim rises above and most satisfyingly, near the end, chooses his own name: James.