James

An urgent, unflinching reimagining of an American classic—told from the heart that was always there, but never heard.

When Jim, an enslaved man in antebellum Missouri, learns he’s about to be sold and torn from his wife and daughter, he escapes to Jackson Island, determined to take his fate into his own hands. At the same time, Huck Finn fakes his death to escape his abusive father. Their paths converge, and so begins a harrowing and deeply human journey down the Mississippi River—a voyage through a fractured nation and toward the distant, fragile hope of freedom.

Drawing from the bones of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Percival Everett gives voice to Jim in all his fullness: intelligent, perceptive, grieving, and brave. Familiar episodes take on striking new meaning as Everett exposes the truths Mark Twain left in the shadows—laying bare the cruelty of American slavery and the resilience of the spirit that resists it.

Bold, blisteringly funny, and unsparing, James is not just a retelling—it’s a reclamation. A masterwork of American literature in its own right.