I realize I am growing to like Percival Everett’s voice and ironic humor, as this is the second of his books I am choosing to review, the first being Erasure (https://www.margueritereads.com/home/erasure-by-percival-everett?rq=percival). This one is quite ambitious, recreating the character Jim from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reimagining Jim, the runaway slave into James, the secret autodidact. Secret, because the penalty for a slave reading or writing would be whipping, maiming, or death. James was able to gain learning during stolen time spent in Judge Thatcher’s library. When James learns that his owner, Miss Watson, plans to sell him, separating him from his wife Sadie and daughter Lizzie, he runs, with the desperate hope that he can somehow earn money to come back and purchase their freedom, bringing his family to freedom. Thus begins his impulsive, distressed, and dangerous trek up and down the Mississippi River.

He is not alone for most of his flight, as Huck Finn also flees their town of Hannibal, Missouri. Huck learns that his father has returned to town, which normally means he is subject to beatings from the raging alcoholic. Huck’s mother died when he was so young that he has little memory of her. Huck and Jim have a mutual bond that is unusual and seemingly inexplicable, as the boy often turns to Jim for protection and guidance. This relationship is later explained in the story, a surprise revelation. Huck and James meet various characters along the way, moving with caution, but nonetheless falling into the trap of lowering their guard at the wrong moments, putting them both into grave danger repeatedly. James especially must exercise great care when meeting others, speaking as a slave would, a sort of ignorant slave dialect, hiding his normal, learned speech. As whites believed that blacks were too stupid to learn to speak properly, Everett depicts all slaves using the ignorant manner of speaking if whites were nearby. To betray that a slave might have intelligence, or even greater intellect than a white, was a seriously dangerous action. There is a scene when James is teaching his daughter the correct way to respond to various situations with whites, the correct words and ways to respond that would preserve the illusion of white superior thought, avoiding the appearance of correcting a white person, not to demonstrate better knowledge than a white person.

As we see James navigate various situations with white and black people, we see the highly developed sense of social sensitivity required to not raise alarm, preserving the illusion of subservience. Everett also depicts scenes of horrific cruelty and abuse on the part of whites to slaves. James and Huck deal with two scamming hoodlums, using hoaxes to get money from susceptible people. As there is a bounty on Jim’s head as a runaway slave, the two plan to earn that money. James also becomes part of a minstrel show, where a group of white male singers perform in black face, using Jim to fill their missing tenor’s spot. Jim wears black face to pose as a white person in black face, a truly ironic scene. Here he meets Norman, a black man pale enough to pass as a white man. Each of these encounters reflect a different aspect of the horrors of slavery, and the complicated and risky scenarios lived daily by blacks.

Everett has done a fine job here, creating a thoughtful and compelling book. Book discussion groups will enjoy this. It should definitely be part of your summer reading this year.