It seems like an idyllic scene from the antebellum South: A carefree young country boy and his happy companion glide down the Mississippi on a raft, smoking pipes and chattering amiably­—but nothing in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is what it seems.

Fresh from his escapades with Tom Sawyer, with six-thousand dollars in the bank and the Widow Douglas as his guardian, Huck Finn faces unforeseen challenges. He bridles under the Widow's and Miss Watson's attempts to "sivilize" him­, as even Tom insists he become respectable. Then, Huck's father, Pap, shows up, determined to lay hands on Huck's fortune. When things don't go Pap's way, he kidnaps Huck.

Escaping from Pap, Huck meets Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has run away after learning that Miss Watson may sell him. Jim plans to head north, find work, and buy his wife and children out of slavery. Huck joins him on a salvaged raft, but due to fog, they pass the mouth of the Ohio River and drift into a world more perilous for Jim than the one they've left behind, where disguise and duplicity are as essential as air.

Telling his story in an innocent, sometimes crude vernacular, Huck struggles to understand the bizarre characters and events he and Jim encounter. The result is a spirited satire, not just of the old South, but of human frailty in all its self-deluding forms.