The Mouth & The Body

It is easy to make history about villains.

One senator says something monstrous. One politician holds the microphone. One public figure becomes the face of an idea, and concentrating our anger there allows everyone behind him to disappear.

Huckleberry is interested in what happens when you widen the frame.

In 1991, Axel is twenty-two years old and still believes identifying the bad man is the same thing as understanding the problem. But elections are arithmetic. Power requires participation. A man can be the mouth, but a mouth does not elect itself.

The harder question is the body behind it, and what responsibility belongs to the people who keep giving the mouth permission to speak for them.

Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor’s Pick: “Adam Nelson’s incisive, provocative, and robustly American debut... honors the fathoms-deep American divisions that Twain marked and urges us to look closer rather than away. For readers of Percival Everett’s James and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout.”
{Full Review} https://booklife.com/project/huckleberry-jim-108347

Huckleberry Jim publishes October 6 during Banned Books Week. Audiobook from Blackstone Publishing.

Official launch October 10 at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.

Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop and fine bookstores everywhere.

First Edition autographed copies available at HuckleberryJimBook.com.
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