With the death of his mother and the sudden disappearance of his father, teenager Tommy Blanks is faced with living alone in the Bronx on the money his father left him and on whatever he can steal. His shoplifting eventually lands him in a Catholic Boys' Home in Upstate New York run by a demonic priest. There Tommy falls in love with a local girl, Nada, but also meets his nemesis, Adam Delano. After a school-wide brawl, Tommy escapes and is presumed dead by the local authorities when they find his hat floating in the river.
Tommy is taken in by a local hermit who leads him to Tommy's great-grandfather's deserted house in a nearby town. History and fiction converge as we discover that Thomas Blankenship - Tommy's great-great grandfather - is the young man whom Mark Twain used as the prototype for Huckleberry Finn. And Tommy's life on the road as an orphan parallels Twain's resourceful Huck Finn. Eventually, his search for the facts and the meaning of his own experience leads Tommy across the country and finally back home.

Michael Pearson is director of the creative writing program at Old Dominion University.