A footloose adventurer is unexpectedly named as guardian for an orphan boy. In his quest to find the child the perfect family, he must grapple with his own longing for love and acceptance.

Unlike the tall-tale, idyllic world of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is firmly grounded in early reality. From the abusive drunkard who serves as Huckleberry's father, to Huck's first tentative grappling with issues of personal liberty and the unknown, Huckleberry Finn endeavors to delve quite a bit deeper into the complexities-both joyful and tragic of life.

Kilmer shares the stories behind his most beloved roles, reminisces about his star-studded career and love life, and reveals the truth behind his recent health struggles. Kilmer has played so many iconic roles over his nearly four-decade film career, but here he steps out of character and reveals his true self. While containing plenty of tantalizing celebrity anecdotes, the book is ultimately a deeply moving reflection on mortality and the mysteries of life. -- adapted from jacket

Beloved for its nostalgic evocation of the Mississippi frontier in the 1840s and for its colorful depiction of an idyll on a raft shared by an orphaned boy and a fugitive slave, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has long been touted as the Great American Novel.

From its first appearance onward, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been both praised and condemned, enshrined as one of the world’s great novels and banned from libraries and classrooms. This new edition is designed to enable modern readers to explore the sources of its greatness, and also to take a fresh, open-minded look at the source of the current controversy about its place in the canon: its representation of race and slavery. Based on the first American edition of 1885, this Broadview Edition includes all 174 original illustrations by E.W. Kemble. Appendices include contemporary reviews, passages deleted from the original manuscript, advertisements for the book, and a range of materials, from newspaper articles to minstrel show scripts to contemporary fiction, showing how race and slavery were depicted in the larger culture at the time.

"All modern American literature comes from one book called Huckleberry Finn," declared Ernest Hemingway. "There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Yet even from the time of its first publication in 1885, Mark Twain's masterpiece has been one of the most celebrated and controversial books ever published in America. No other story so central to our American identity has been so loved and so reviled as Huck Finn's autobiography.