Review of Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson, read by January LaVoy

Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson
read by January LaVoy

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 27 minutes.
Review written August 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Good Dirt, from the author of Black Cake, is another sweeping saga that shows us a person in extraordinary circumstances in the present and weaves a tapestry of history around that person.

In Good Dirt, Ebony Freeman has fled to France in order to get some time to herself, nine months after the man she was supposed to marry didn’t show up for the wedding.

This wasn’t Ebbie’s first brush with notoriety, and the first time was even worse: When she was ten years old, her fifteen-year-old brother was shot in their Connecticut home when some thieves were trying to steal their family’s historic old jar. Ebbie was with her brother when he died and saw the jar in pieces on the floor.

The family was proud of that jar, and loved to tell stories about its history. It came to New England when Ebbie’s great-great-grandfather brought it along when he stowed away on a ship and made his way to freedom. Moses, the enslaved man who made the jar, carved an inscription on the bottom of the jar, at a time when it was illegal for enslaved people to read or write. That inscription has inspired the family for generations.

But now Ebbie’s managing her friend’s guesthouse in France – and the first people to show up are her ex-fiance and his new girlfriend, Ashley. It’s not as big a coincidence as it seems – Ashley had picked up an ad Ebbie’s friend had placed in a neighborhood cafe when she was in the area for Ebbie’s planned wedding. But the awkward situation forces Ebbie to think through a lot of things she’d been avoiding.

And that’s the situation that fuels the book. Ebbie decides to write the stories of the jar, and we learn its rich history while watching Ebbie deal with her own history and what this all means for the present with the man she’d planned to marry in front of her on the other side of the ocean.

As in Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson gives us multiple perspectives on events. I, for one, didn’t care what the ex-fiance thought about things – but she uses even that to help us get to know the whole family – all still dealing with the loss of Ebbie’s brother, and trying to go on with dignity in the present.

This is another powerful story that completely enthralls.

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Review of The Women, by Kristin Hannah, read by Julia Whelan

The Women

by Kristin Hannah
read by Julia Whelan

Macmillan Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 57 minutes.
Review written August 5, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I know, I know – I’m way behind most people on reading this book, but Wow! Now I see why it’s been so popular.

“The Women” the title refers to are the women who served in Vietnam. Even though they were often told after the war that “There were no women in Vietnam.” (And Kristin Hannah’s author’s note at the end tells us that was a detail she got from more than one woman she interviewed.)

She tells the story of many women by focusing in on one woman, Frankie McGrath. At her brother’s going-away party, setting off to serve in Vietnam, when they all thought the war would be over soon, she was told, “Women can be heroes, too.”

So Frankie trained as a nurse and decided to serve in Vietnam with her brother. But the very day she signed up and told her parents the news was the day that they got word that her brother was killed in action, no remains found.

When Frankie got to Vietnam, it was trial by fire. Kristin Hannah takes us through her bewildering first day when there was a mass casualty event, through her training in the neuro ward, watching over patients who were unresponsive, through her coming into true expertise as an Operating Room Nurse.

And the author shows us how this was the worst and best time of Frankie’s life. Besides the horrors that haunt her, she built friendships like cement. She fell in love more than once – trying to avoid the ones who are already married. And she watched people die. But she also saved many lives, and held the hands of the dying so that they were not alone.

Half of the book is about what happened after Frankie got back. She was not hailed as a hero, not even by her parents, who’d told people she’d gone to school in Florence. The reader can see her PTSD symptoms – before that was even named as an issue.

There were times as I was reading this book when I cringed because I was pretty sure another impossibly hard thing was going to hit Frankie. And I wasn’t wrong.

But this is ultimately a story of a woman who went through impossibly hard things and came out the other side. The book ends on a well-earned hopeful note. And I love that Frankie represents the actual lives of the thousands of women who served in Vietnam. Her story helps us understand their stories.

kristinhannah.com

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Review of Daughters of Shandong, by Eve J. Chung

Daughters of Shandong

by Eve J. Chung
read by Yu-Li Alice Shen

Books on Tape, 2024. 11 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written July 3, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Daughters of Shandong tells the harrowing tale of a mother and her daughters caught in the crossfire of the Communist Revolution in China after World War II.

Hai, the oldest daughter, tells how her mother’s life was difficult even before the Communists. Because she hadn’t borne any daughters to her husband, the honored son of a wealthy land-owning family, her mother-in-law made her life miserable, working her from dawn to dusk and forcing her to kneel for hours as punishment for her many imagined failings. So when they get warning that the Communists are coming, Hai’s mother and sisters are left behind, supposedly to protect the land, but with no way to do so.

Since her father and grandfather are not there for the Communists’ renunciation, Hai must take their punishment and almost dies after the ordeal. So her mother leads them to Qingdao, where they learn their family has already fled to Taiwan. For them to follow is tremendously difficult, needing connections and ingenuity. They live as refugees in Qingdao and then Hong Kong before finding a way to Taiwan, and all along the way, they learn that things can get even worse than they had imagined – and then even worse than that.

So it’s not an easy tale to listen to. But the author based it on the life of her grandmother, doing tremendous research to fill in the gaps, and overall telling a story of rising against incredible odds. In the end, she shows that yes, even daughters are people of incredible worth, capable of amazing accomplishments.

evejchung.com

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Review of Wooing the Witch Queen, by Stephanie Burgis

Wooing the Witch Queen

by Stephanie Burgis
read by Amanda Leigh Cobb

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 8 hours, 33 minutes.
Review written June 12, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve long enjoyed Stephanie Burgis’s books for kids – fun fantasy stories with imagination and heart. They always make me smile. So it was something of an adjustment to listen to a sexy romantasy for adults from her – but in the end, it, too, has imagination and heart and made me smile.

The set-up is that Archduke Felix from the ever-expanding Empire has been controlled and abused for most of his life by his father-in-law. He’s not even allowed to study governance, but kept busy with literature and poetry. But now that his beloved wife has died, he knows that his father-in-law is laying plans to kill him. So he has nothing to lose. He’s going to go to the neighboring country where the Witch Queen Saskia has overcome her evil uncle and taken control – because she is the one person who’s successfully stood up to the Empire’s forces so far.

He grabs a dark cloak and is surprised when no one stops him, and he’s apparently welcomed to an audience with Saskia. What he doesn’t know is that she recently placed an ad for a dark wizard to put her magic library in order – her uncle left it in disarray. And as Felix is waiting at the door, he hears her telling her allies how happy she would be to execute Archduke Felix – because of all his father-in-law has done in his name. So when she mistakes him for a librarian, he takes the job.

And it turns out that studying literature and poetry is perfect training for being a magical librarian. And Saskia finds him surprisingly kind and careful – unlike any other dark wizard she’s ever met.

But of course he can’t just settle down and stay a librarian. He’s going to have to tell Saskia the truth at some point, and hopefully before the Empire finds a way to take down Saskia’s magical wall and annex her kingdom.

This book starts a trilogy that includes Saskia’s allies, the other two “Queens of Villainy.” I’m going to want to read them all.

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Review of Beyond the Limit, by Joan Spicci

Beyond the Limit

The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya

by Joan Spicci

Tom Doherty Associates (Forge), 2002. 490 pages.
Review written June 8, 2025, from my own copy.
Originial review written September 1, 2003.
Starred Review

I’m celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks with #Sonderbooks25. My plan was to reread one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs and post about the process. Well, things got complicated because I couldn’t confine myself to that – but the fact remains that Beyond the Limit was the one book I chose from my 2003 Sonderbooks Stand-outs to reread. And I’m writing a new review, not because that one isn’t still valid, but to include a blog post and have a review in the new phone-friendly format, while reflecting on the book after a reread.

This is still my absolutely favorite novel about a mathematician. Okay, I haven’t read a lot of novels about mathematicians – but it’s still the book I bring up any time anyone asks about mathematical books for adults, and it’s always been included on my Sondermath page.

The crazy thing about this historical novel is that it’s all true. Joan Spicci learned Russian and translated books and letters by Sofya Kovalevskaya before writing this book – and then she put what she learned into a novel. And okay, it’s not a work of nonfiction and we can’t promise she got everybody’s motivations and words correct – but oh my goodness, it’s a compelling story. And checking the Wikipedia page suggests that all the big dramatic events of the story actually happened.

The story tells the quest of Sofya Kovalevskaya to be the first woman to get a doctorate in Math. She was born in 1850, and the book begins with her a teen in Russia, studying with tutors, but not allowed to go to university at all in Russia. And she can’t leave the country without permission from her father or a husband. So her sister and a group of friends start looking for a man who will enter into a fictitious marriage with one of them, intending to sponsor the other friends as well. They find Vladimir Kovalevsky, and he agrees to enter into such a marriage with Sofya – but realizing that a fictitious marriage was considered criminal sacrilege in Russia at the time. Vladimir himself was a scientist and a publisher, having published Darwin’s books in Russian.

And then the novel shows Sofya and Vladimir falling in love. But she doesn’t dare live as his actual wife, because if she were to get pregnant, that would end any chance for studying at a university. And she faces all kinds of prejudice anyway, eventually finding a mentor who has to tutor her privately in her PhD work.

But along the way, the historical backdrop is amazing. She goes with Vladimir to London and meets Darwin and his wife. And later, her sister gets involved in the Paris commune portrayed in Victor Hugo’s work, and Sofya herself gets involved working in the hospital in besieged Paris – and her sister and her husband get arrested. This was another thing that, if it were known, could have ended her academic career.

On this second reading, I got pretty annoyed with her sister. She scorned any idea of Sofya falling in love with Vladimir – and then later married a man for love herself. But the whole novel shows us Sofya trying to please her sister, no matter how her sister treats her.

The whole story is gripping and makes me appreciate my own education much more fully – and gets you cheering for Sofya and the many obstacles she faced simply to get to exercise her brilliant mind and do mathematics. I still highly recommend this amazing historical novel.

joanspicci.com

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Review of Watership Down, by Richard Adams, read by Peter Capaldi

Watership Down

by Richard Adams
read by Peter Capaldi

Blackstone Publishing, 2019. Novel first published in 1972. 17 hours, 31 minutes.
Review written May 3, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Earlier review written in 2001.
Starred Review
2002 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Fiction Rereads

Ah, it was so good to revisit Watership Down! This wasn’t the one book I chose to reread from my 2002 Stand-outs as part of my #Sonderbooks25 celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks – but that motivated me to notice that my public library had an available copy of an eaudiobook – and then I couldn’t keep myself from again enjoying the epic adventures of Hazel and Fiver and Bigwig and all the rest.

It’s funny – I’ve always thought of it as an adult novel. The library has it in the adult section. But my ex-husband did read it to our kids when they were young, and Overdrive has the audiobook listed as Juvenile. I’m going to fall back on the fact that it’s truly for all ages. There is plenty of life-and-death violence, and the reading level is adult, but I think that for listening to the story, this is a perfect family adventure.

So if you’ve never read Watership Down – it’s an epic adventure of a band of rabbits. Hazel’s runt brother Fiver has a vision of death and destruction, so they leave the old warren with a few others and set off across the dangerous countryside to a sunny place on a hillside. Along the way, they meet dangers from predators, but also from other rabbits, encountering two troublesome rabbit societies. And once they arrive, they have the problem that they need some female rabbits, or the new warren can’t survive.

And especially wonderful about this book are the tales told about El-ahrairah, the mythical rabbit hero and trickster. His exploits inspire their own adventures in life-or-death situations.

And, yes, this book about rabbits is full of tension and heroism, and you come to love the very rabbity characters. They feel like real rabbits with authentic rabbit interests.

And I was so happy to revisit this tale! It was fun to hear it told with a British accent. Yes, there’s some sexism, but since it’s about rabbit does, it feels like something I can overlook. Other than that, it completely stands up to the passage of time and I was simply happy to spend time with Hazel and company again. I decided to write a new review so I’ll have one in the new phone-friendly format. This is a book I will recommend all my life long.

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Review of Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales

by Heather Fawcett
read by Ell Potter and Michael Dodds

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours 44 minutes.
Review written April 2, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh, I love the Emily Wilde books more with each volume! You’re going to want to read these in order, especially to watch Emily’s relationship with Wendell develop, but it was okay not to remember every detail of the previous books. I love these books so much, I decided to purchase my own copy and preordered it, but listening has been such a delightful experience, I still put the audiobook on hold.

The charm of the book is found especially in the character of Emily Wilde, the foremost dryadologist in the world – at least in this alternate world where faeries are real and studying them is a serious academic discipline. Her encyclopedic knowledge of faery lore means she has what it takes to now survive becoming a queen of faerie – or so we hope. For his stepmother is dead, and Wendell is ready to take his throne in the Faerie Kingdom of Where the Trees Have Eyes.

Except – it turns out that Wendell’s stepmother isn’t actually dead yet, and she’s found a way to poison the realm so that it is dying as she dies. Now it’s up to Emily to find the tale that applies so she can defeat the old queen’s plans. Though she does get plenty of help from characters we’ve met in the earlier books.

Something I love about these books is what a serious academic Emily is – even compelled to cite sources and include footnotes. The reader Ell Potter does an excellent Footnote Voice, so I wasn’t surprised to see that’s what’s found in the text. Wendell, on the other hand, tries to get her to lighten up and enjoy his beautiful kingdom. And it’s all completely delightful.

Even though Wendell and Emily are now king and queen of a faerie realm, they’re still traveling together, and Emily is still doing research, so I hope there will be more books to come. I’m sure Emily Wilde’s adventures – and publications – are not over.

heatherfawcettbooks.com
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Sonderbooks25: Looking Back at Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman

Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

Doubleday, 1992. 263 pages.
New Review written March 31, 2025, from my own copy.
Original review written January 19, 2002.

Oh dear. I am now embarrassed that Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman, has long been one of my all-time favorite books. It’s not that it didn’t hold up; it’s that my eyes have been opened to cultural stereotypes. And I’m a little bummed! Shout out, though, to Pam Margolis and the Cultural Competency Training that everyone involved with the Cybils Awards takes.
They opened my eyes.

Here’s the background. I’m running a series of posts I’m calling Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of posting Sonderbooks. As part of the celebration, I’m choosing one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs to reread. In the case of my 2001 choice, The Sand-Reckoner, by Gillian Bradshaw, I wrote a new review and posted it in the newer format. (The first five years of Sonderbooks were posted in a different format and you won’t find them listed in the current indexes.)

I’m afraid I’m not going to do that for Caravan, because although I still love the book, and, wow, it stirs up all kinds of memories from who I was when I read it (I’d read it more than once before reviewing it in 2002.), I’m afraid with opened eyes, I’m not going to recommend it so heartily. So I will add this explanation to the top of the old review and leave it there for those who dig deeply into my website. And on this blog post.

The book is the story of Caressa Horvath, who’s sixteen years old when the story opens in 1911. No, let me revise that – the Caressa telling the story is old, at the end of her life, and revealing secrets especially for her granddaughter, but the tale she tells begins when she was sixteen.

Caressa grew up in a carnival, but her mother wanted her to be a lady, so she saved money and sent her to a school for young ladies in New England. But while she was a student, she picked the pocket of a rich gentleman who was well-traveled – and he caught her. He kept quiet about it, but took her under his wing and eventually married her, despite being twenty years older – to “protect” her. And he took her with him on an expedition to Africa, beginning in Tripoli.

After some time in Tripoli, where her husband made arrangements for their caravan and Caressa befriended her Muslim guide, who showed her around the city, they set off across the desert. They’ve paid off the Tuareg to cross. But before long, they’re confronted by a different group of Tuareg, and Caressa’s husband gets very indignant when they want payment – and the entire caravan ends up getting slaughtered – except for Caressa, who had been playing with her finger puppets to calm herself (one of which is named “Mr. Jappy”) – and they think she is doing magic, so they spare her life and take her with them.

So that’s where the cultural sensitivity becomes questionable. Caressa is much, much more culturally sensitive than her husband, seeing everyone she encounters as actual people. She goes on to live in the desert, among different desert peoples, facing different dangers, for three years. For most of that time, she has a friend and companion in a boy named Bakuli who learned basic English from Christian missionaries and calls himself a Jesus-boy. He was a slave of the Tuareg, but he is the one who warned Caressa that when one of the villagers is on their deathbed, that will be enough to convince them that her magic – which saved her from slaughter – is actually bad and she should be killed.

So Caressa and Bakuli escape together and have more adventures, with time living among different desert people. Later, they’re in a caravan again, and Caressa witnesses a man getting assassinated. She’s afraid the assassin will kill her, but instead when she’s sick from lack of water and the long road – he sells her into slavery. She convinces Bakuli to escape while she is still too sick to leave, and now she’s ready for a major part of the story.

All of that is far, far more riveting than it sounds in my brief summary. And the author makes individuals with names and personalities out of the people Caressa encounters and lives with. However, there are strong shades of the “Magical Negro” trope in the many spiritual encounters Caressa has along the way, finding there’s something behind the villagers’ beliefs. They are also portrayed as superstitious and sensitive to spirits – but Caressa senses the spirits, too, so maybe it’s not superstition? And the slaughtering, enslaving, and assassinating give the feeling that the “savages” stereotype isn’t too far under the surface.

Okay, but that’s a little vague and general. I don’t know what life was actually like at that time in Africa, and at least the author did enough research to know about the different people groups and languages and where they lived, and Caressa sees and names individual people.

But then came the part that made me blanch after “Me Too”:

Caressa had been enslaved, and they were taking her to a harem in Constantinople, when a stranger buys her. And the first thing he does is order her to take off her clothes (in Hausa), and he rapes her.

But Caressa’s mind is blown by the sex. “I was played on like an instrument, reaching sensations never dreamed of.”

Really? She’s just been sold as a slave, raped by the guy who bought her, she’s scared and alone, and you want me to believe that he’s so good at it that she enjoyed it?

When she says “Good heavens” after sex, he discovers that she speaks English and is shocked – her skin was dark by all the time in the sun. He is a Scotsman – who has the Sight, which is what led him to Caressa, though we don’t find that out right away.

She does confront him when he exclaims over her speaking English and asks who she is:

What does it matter to you who I am? You bought me for four gold pieces and now you’ve raped me and you’d have done it whether I was Tuareg, Hausa, Fulani or Arab, so why should it make any difference who I am, and I hope you speak enough English to understand that I think you a vulture – an ungulu – a monster and a bastard.

His answer comes in a hard even voice:

I speak and understand English and I paid four gold pieces for you for reasons I don’t care to mention just now, and I took you fast to put my brand on you because if you were a Tuargia you’d think ill of me if I didn’t, and be out of here by morning.

So, hold on, he’s saying that if she were Black it would have been okay???!

The next day, although she “could not help but dislike the manner of his ‘taking’ me,” she realizes that as a slave, she could have had it happen with a Targui or by the Turkish sultan. (Again, it’s okay, because he’s white???) And then she starts remembering those new sensations she’d experienced – and they have sex again, and from then on, he’s basically her one true love.

And now I am embarrassed how much I’ve loved this book.

Mind you, the twist in the ending is fantastic, and that’s what I’m left thinking about. I am a romantic at heart, so I did love their undying love once it got started – pulled together by the Sight! By Destiny! (Not simply the Magical Negro stereotype, but also the Magical Scotsman.) Caressa’s not in a traditional marriage, and it felt subversive to me as a young married evangelical to love this book anyway. But reading it this time, the manner of their meeting takes my concerns about cultural insensitivity and multiplies them.

And I still enjoyed rereading this book! But when I finished it, I had a bout of insomnia because I kept thinking about young newlywed Sondy who first read it and how that worked out (or rather, didn’t).

So – I still love the book, but that love is dampened in my skeptical old age, and I no longer feel I can wholeheartedly recommend it. But reading it was still a trip down memory lane and I’m excited about the rest of the revisiting I’m going to do for Sonderbooks25.

Review of The Sand-Reckoner, by Gillian Bradshaw

The Sand-Reckoner

by Gillian Bradshaw

Forge (Tom Doherty Associates), 2000. 351 pages.
This review written March 13, 2025, from my own copy.
Original review written August 2001.
Starred Review
2001 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Fiction

I’m revisiting this wonderful book – one of my all-time favorites – as part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks. I’m rereading at least one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. And while I will probably not write a new review for all of them, the first five years of reviews were posted in a different format that isn’t phone-friendly, so I want to bring this book to the main site. Does this qualify as an “Old Favorite“? The first time I read it, the book was new! But I’m thinking that enough time has gone by, and it will always be one of my lifetime favorite books, so I’m going to add it to the Old Favorites page, too.

The Sand-Reckoner was reviewed in my very first issue of Sonderbooks (back when it was an email newsletter posted in issues), and the first time I read it was while I was on vacation in Ireland. Despite not being in an idyllic location this time around, I still found the book utterly delightful.

It’s all about the character of Archimedes. He’s portrayed as a genius who gets so wrapped up in his work, he forgets about anything else – which totally fits the historical anecdotes about him. This book shows Archimedes as a young man, returning from the intellectual company of the Museum of Alexandria back to his home in Syracuse, because his father is very ill, and Syracuse is now at war with Rome.

Because of Archimedes’ geometrical genius, he’s better than anyone at building machines – including machines of war, and as he arrives, his first task is to convince the leaders of Syracuse that he can build bigger and better catapults for them. After that, the tyrant of Syracuse (He’s a good guy, but that’s what the leader was called.) must figure out how to entice Archimedes to stay, instead of going back to Alexandria, where more understood his philosophical discussions.

There’s a major subplot about Archimedes’ Roman slave and a romantic subplot as well, and the whole book immerses you in the world of ancient Syracuse with a lovable naive genius.

And, yes, this is one of my all-time favorite books. I’m a math person myself, though never as genius as Archimedes, nor so single-minded. But I do have a big soft spot for sweet nerdy engineers like him.

tor.com

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Review of Big Jim and the White Boy, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

Big Jim and the White Boy

An American Classic Reimagined

by David F. Walker
and Marcus Kwame Anderson
Color by Isabell Struble

Ten Speed Graphic, 2024. 282 pages.
Review written February 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given each year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. I couldn’t resist the title of this graphic novel – a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

It’s been a very long time since I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I’m not sure how many incidents from this book came from that one (I don’t think a whole lot), but it begins by illustrating a passage from that book – which is then interrupted by a 101-year-old Jim himself in 1932 Nicodemus, Kansas, telling stories to Black children alongside an old Huckleberry Finn. Jim says about the words Samuel Clemens put in his mouth, “Who talks that kind of gibberish?” And then he tells stories of what really happened.

Another part of the frame is a professor at Howard University in 2022 talking about the historical people and events behind Mark Twain’s stories – and how he whitewashed it to make slavery in Missouri not seem so bad. She’s believes that Jim was based on her own great-great-great-grandfather.

So with these two frames giving commentary – Old Jim and Old Huck bantering with each other and the professor giving historical notes – we hear about the adventures Jim and Huck had. Jim was looking for his wife and children, sold down the river by Huck’s father – and he told his story everywhere he went, so that word would get to them that he was looking. Meanwhile, he rescued enslaved people and fought their enslavers.

Big Jim made a name for himself (and got his face on big, scary posters) helping with the Underground Railroad, in the border wars when there was a question if Kansas would be a slave state or a free state, and during the Civil War, fighting for the Union.

And through all the adventures, Jim and Huck save each other’s lives, though, honestly, Huck is more of a sidekick in this tale. This book reveals more about their relationship, and I love that they end up together, with friendly bickering and storytelling.

As a graphic novel, this is a much quicker read than the original, and as a bonus you don’t have to wade through all that dialect. An epic historical tale.

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