Too Ethnic.

Before Axel Emerson ever plays Huck Finn, someone has to decide whether his face is American enough for the part.

“Little… too ethnic.”

It’s a casting note, casually delivered. An assessment of bone structure, complexion, ancestry. Whatever the person behind the desk thinks he can read in a stranger’s face.

The irony is deliberate. Axel is being told he doesn’t have the right “all-American look” to play one of the most recognizable American boys ever written. And then he gets the job anyway, because the tour needs a body by Monday.

That contradiction is where Huckleberry begins.

Axel has spent four years learning how to become other people. None of it can change the first thing the room sees.

Before the novel can ask who gets to tell America’s stories, it asks something even more primitive:

Who gets to look American?

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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