Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up-Though Twain began this story in 1885, it was never finished. As it opens, Tom convinces Huck and freed-slave Jim to head West to live with the "Injuns," just to prove that the red men are not the ornery savages the Widow Douglas has insisted they are. They soon join up with the Oregon-bound Mills family. A group of Sioux warriors befriend them but then slaughters the Mills boys and their parents, carrying off the two daughters, Peggy and Flaxy, and Jim. Huck and Tom join forces with Peggy's fianc‚, Brace, to rescue the captives and approach the Indian camp-and here ends Twain's part of the story. Nelson continues with Brace being killed and Tom and Huck left to continue the rescue. As was Twain's wont, Nelson does not shy away from touchy subjects-Peggy is raped by both the Indians and a white trader; an army sergeant molests unsuspecting adolescent boys, and relations between the Mormons and the U.S. are badly strained. There are scalpings, shootings, and a near hanging but by the end, Huck seems to be turning himself into "a right civilized" type, marrying Peggy and heading off into the sunset to start a new life. Nelson makes an effort to retain Twain's style of writing and does rather well with it. The adventure and harrowing escapes will keep readers interested, although purists may question whether Twain would have allowed Huck to give up his independence to marry Peggy. Nonetheless, the plot is intriguing, suspenseful, and well told, with plenty of realistic details to set the mood. Though Tom and Jim figure prominently in the beginning of this story, Huck is the clear hero, and his basic goodness never comes into question.

Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI

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Product Description

In 1885 while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was becoming one of the best-selling American classics of modern times, Mark Twain began this sequel in which Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Jim head west on the trail of two white girls kidnapped by Sioux warriors, learning the hard way that "book Injuns and real Injuns ain’t the same." Fifteen thousand words into the work, Twain stopped in the middle of a sentence, never to go back; the unfinished story sitting on dusty shelves for more than a hundred years until The University of California cut a deal with Utah author Lee Nelson to finish it.

This story, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians, is the first new book with Mark Twain’s name on it in nearly a hundred years, with readers saying they can’t tell where Twain stops and Nelson begins: a story of adventure, wit and wisdom with Tom and Huck seeking true love while tramping through hostile Indian country, befriending Bill Hickman and Porter Rockwell, stealing from the United States Army, then on to face a gunfight and hangman’s noose in Sacramento, California.

Author's Note: I discovered Mark Twain’s unfinished story Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians when it was published in Life Magazine in 1968. I was in the Brigham Young University barbershop, reading part of the story before my haircut, and I read the rest afterward.

I was enthralled, hanging on every word as Huck, Tom and Jim joined up with the Mills family on the Platte River. A group of Sioux Indians befriended the family, then suddenly slaughtered the parents and older boys, and kidnapped the two girls and Jim. Huck and Tom joined forces with mountain man Brace Johnson to follow the Indians and rescue the girls. As they approached the Indian camp, getting ready for a daring rescue, the story suddenly ended, right in the middle of a sentence. I was so disappointed. Although Mark Twain wrote and published a number of books and stories after 1885, he never finished this one.

Early in 2002, while watching a documentary on Mark Twain on a local PBS station, I remembered reading the Among the Indians story in the barbershop. By this time I had published a dozen historical novels with settings on the American frontier, and realized I was probably as qualified as any other living author to finish the work begun by Twain. A little research on the web led me to those who controlled the copyright—The Mark Twain Foundation and the University of California Press. Contact was made, approval was granted, a contract was drawn up, and the following story is the result.

I have no idea how Twain intended to finish the story, and I reason that he didn’t know either, or he would have done it. I just hope that wherever he is, he enjoys my conclusion as much as I enjoyed his beginning.