Huckleberry Jim - Softcover

Nelson, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798996345007

Publisher: Workhouse Editions, 2026

Synopsis

<p>A darkly funny 1991 road novel about two actors touring a stripped-down Huckleberry Finn through a hostile America - publishing during Banned Books Week, in the year of America's Semiquincentennial, and the 150th anniversary of Tom Sawyer. For readers of Percival Everett's James.</p><p></p><p>Axel Emerson isn't chasing a dream - he's running from a body. After the sudden death of his estranged father, and the detective's calls that follow, a washed-up casting agent offers him an exit: tour the schools as Huck Finn in a stripped-down, two-man stage version of the American classic. It's 1991, and the country is cracking open.</p><p></p><p>His co-star is Moses Morton, a fifty-five-year-old Black actor cast as Jim - and from the first moment, Moses sees straight through him. Their road trip through hostile American towns becomes a crash course in race, history, and performative ignorance, recited from lines a white man wrote in 1884 about a country that hasn't changed as much as it thinks. When performance and reality finally collide, there's no script left to hide behind.</p><p></p><p>Huckleberry Jim is a reckoning with race, guilt, and the bedtime stories America tells itself to sleep at night. For readers of Percival Everett's James and Paul Beatty's The Sellout.</p>

About this title

About the Author

Adam Nelson has lived at the intersection of performance and American storytelling for more than three decades - as an actor, filmmaker, and founder of Workhouse, the New York public relations agency he has run since 1999, representing filmmakers, artists, and cultural institutions. A professor at the New Jersey Film Academy, he is a merit winner of the Writer's Digest International Screenplay Competition. His debut novel, Huckleberry Jim - a BookLife Editor's Pick, longlisted for The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Prize in the top 3% of submissions - draws on his own 1991 tour performing a two-man Huckleberry Finn for schools across the Northeast. It publishes October 6, 2026, during Banned Books Week, with the audiobook simultaneously from Blackstone Publishing.

From the Back Cover

HUCKLEBERRY JIM
TWO ACTORS TRY TO HOLD A CHILDREN'S TOUR OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN TOGETHER—WHILE THE COUNTRY TRIES TO TEAR THEM APART.
Axel Emerson takes a job he has no business taking: playing Huck Finn across 1991 America. He thinks it's a way out. It isn't.
His co-star is Moses Morton, a fifty-five-year-old Black actor playing Jim. Moses sees exactly who Axel is. Axel doesn't.
For two weeks they share motel rooms and hostile towns that smile at the show and snarl at what's underneath it. Night after night, Axel recites lines written by a white man in 1884 about a country that hasn't changed as much as it pretends.
By the end, only one of them will know what he's been saying all along.
Based on a true story.

Booklife / Publishers Weekly Reviews // *Editor's Pick
"Nelson's incisive, provocative, and robustly American debut" — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Nelson honors the fathoms-deep American divisions that Twain marked and urges us to look closer rather than away." — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Smart, incisive road-trip through Twain's classic and 1991 America." — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Capturing the spirit of Twain, social commentary marks every page with a steady stream of cleverly worded aphorisms and elegant analogies." — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Nelson, an actor himself, so deftly depicts Axel's inner emotional rollercoaster, the hardships of a thespian's daily life, and the physical realm they inhabit." — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Twain fans and anyone who, when young, felt the world expand thanks to touring theater troupes, will recognize and love scenes set in the classroom." — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Its debates about bigotry match today's: the use of racial slurs in art, pervasive antisemitism, and ignorance as a denial tactic." — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

"Huckleberry Jim feels especially well-timed—but, sadly, wouldn't it always?" — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor's Pick)

Edition details

• Publisher: Workhouse Editions
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798996345007
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280