I feel this is just another rewrite of a classic tale. I feel it is disjointed, trying to maintain some of the historical ideas and yet putting the setting in a contemporary California. The woodblock cutting style illustrations are interesting.

Loved it . Great adventure story, with shades of societal commentary just like the original Huckleberry Finn. Recently read Huck Out West, another book based on the original, but much grimmer.

THE BALLAD OF HUCK AND MIGUEL (2018)
By Tim DeRoche and illustrated by Daniel Gonzalez
Red Tail Press, 270 pages.
★★★★

To be honest, The Ballad of Huck and Miguel is a one-trick pony. Lucky for us it’s a really good stratagem. What if Huckleberry Finn was a boy from the 21st century and instead of journeying down the might Mississippi with a runaway slave, he was on the lam with an illegal immigrant and floating down the Los Angeles River?

Authors take on classics at their own peril and it’s especially gutsy for a first-time novelist such DeRoche to flirt with one that many, including me, believe to be the much-debated Great American Novel. Having said that, I zipped through DeRoche’s delightful tale much faster than Huck and Miguel paddled away from various dangers. DeRoche’s structure is that of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and is populated by most of the same characters. Our update finds the unschooled-by-choice Huck in Missouri with his reprobate Pap, who thinks that relocation to Golden State would afford better con opportunities. Huck is taken against his will and locked into Pap’s creaky camper and off we go to California, with a few stops in which Huck’s attempts to escape Pap’s clutches are thwarted.

In Los Angeles Huck meets a kindred spirit, Tom Sawyer, of course, but a better scrubbed version that lives with his Aunt Polly, a civil rights lawyer. Huck and Tom mess up a drug deal in which Pap hoped to profit. Instead, Huck is in for a reward and, just as in Twain, Pap is determined to play paterfamilias to get his hands on the dough, even if he has to kill Huck to do so. This means Huck won’t have a lot of time to acclimate to his foster home placement with Miss Watson and Ms. Douglas, a same-sex couple—“thespians,” as Huck calls them in his mangle of the English language. Not that Huck wishes to be “sivilized” in the first place. He roams the rugged hills and dales of northern Los Angeles, his main magnets back to the homestead being good grub and time at the stable, where he befriends Miguel, the horse groomer.

Pap’s appearances always portend disaster and soon Huck and Miguel find themselves running from a crime they didn’t commit. The situation is especially perilous for Miguel as he’s a “Mexigrant,” an illegal immigrant. So it’s down the Los Angeles River for our unlikely twosome. Did I say the Los Angeles River? If you only know it from Hollywood films where it appears as a concrete ditch filled with more graffiti and homeless people than water, you probably don’t know that it rises in the Simi Hills and that some of its 48-mile length is wooded and wild. It’s even pretty deep in spots before it dumps into the Pacific Ocean near Long Beach. DeRoche uses the flight from “policecops” and trigger-happy Pap to construct side journeys through 21st century perils: gangs, hucksters, rattlesnakes, double-dealers, and shady characters so deceitful they almost make Pap seem wholesome. They also rely on the kindness of various strangers such as off-the-grid loners, evangelists, and self-styled revolutionaries. Will it all come out well in the end? Read Huckleberry Finn and you’ve got your answer.

This is the time to make the obligatory remark that Tim LaRoche is no Mark Twain, a statement akin to saying that the horse at the fairgrounds is no Secretariat. LaRoche is clever with capturing Twain’s cadences and Huck’s penchant for garbling words. His major fault is that he slathers what Twain parses out slowly. Occasionally he simply overdoes things. Everything out of Huck’s mouth is a grammatical/synatctical steamboat wreck: ‘cause it remembered me of, breaked glass, sacrificializing, fantods, fantastical, catched, ‘thorities…. Huck narrates the tale and we don’t expect the Queen’s English from him, but it might have worked better had DeRoche made Huck a bit less garrulous and interjected other voices more often. Lost in the constant patter and episodic structure is the languid pacing of Twain’s original that allows the reader to float down the big river rather than cascade down a small one.

But truly I nitpick. If you ask my literary judgment, the best homage to Twain is Jon Cinch’s Finn (2007), an imaginative prequel to Huckleberry Finn. It’s masterful, but it isn’t nearly as much fun as DeRoche’s Ballad of Huck and Miguel. Kudos to DeRoche for being so impertinent as to even attempt such an undertaking. His is a one-trick pony, but it’s no gelding.

Rob Weir

The classic tale of Huckleberry Finn is updated for a modern, urban generation. All the characters from Mark Twain’s beloved classic are here, but in slightly different roles. If you enjoyed the adventure of the original, you will like this one too.

This version is set in Los Angeles. Pap brings Huck to LA with him as he attempts to seal a drug deal, but things go wrong. Huck finds Tom Sawyer and the two become fast friends. Huck manages to get away from Pap with Tom’s help, and Judge Thatcher sends him to live with Miss Watson and Ms. Douglas. Instead of the widows of the original, they are a young couple living on a ranch in the hills near LA. Huck has mountains and a stream to explore and makes friends with Miguel, who takes care of the horses on the ranch. He and Huck become good friends and Miguel teaches the boy all about how to take care of horses. Huck meets the Grangerfords, who, in this version are some sort of reality TV stars. He becomes friends with Buck Grangerford. Things seem to be going along well until Pap reappears and violence ensues. Huck and Miguel find themselves on the run, with Miguel being suspected of murder. Pap is responsible, but because Miguel is in the country illegally, he takes the blame in the public eye. Huck and Miguel escape to the river and build themselves a raft using some inner tubes and an old garage door they find. A big rainstorm provides water flow in the Los Angeles River and off they go on an adventure.

They meet all sorts of characters along the river, including a Colonel living in a tent, trolls under the bridges, some activists, the Duke and others. There are wild species like owls, coyotes, egrets, hawks, turtles, and herons that they encounter too. Pap finds them and pursues them down the river, so they are hiding from the law and from Pap as well. They travel mostly at night.

Aunt Polly is a lawyer in this version of the story, and Huck hopes that she can help Miguel with the legal trouble he is in. They are traveling toward the end of the river where Tom lives with his aunt. Huck thinks that Aunt Polly can fix it so that Miguel can stay in the country and be reunited with his family, who live in Arizona. With so many people after them, can they make it?

The dialog that Huck uses to speak is the sort used in the original, so the novel stays true to the tone of the original. Mark Twain wrote the book as a statement against the existence at that time of slavery. This modern version switches to the newer issue of immigration. Huck is still a backwoods country bumpkin in this novel, and he uses the racist terms he was taught by his father to refer to Miguel as a “Mexigrant.” Much as the original novel used the N word, this can be grating on the nerves of the modern reader. However, I think that is the point. The novel includes a politician character whose rants about immigrants have made him famous (or infamous), and that rings true with our current situation. I don’t think Huck’s character is trying to be overtly racist, but the novel is trying to deliver the same message as Twain’s original did, only with a different issue, one more current to our time period. The issue of immigration. Huck’s character comes off as sort of an innocent backwoods bumpkin who is seeing many things for the first time and learning big lessons as he goes. (It is stated in the novel that his age is “almost 9 years old,” which gives credibility to his innocent nature.) He gradually learns that things are not as his Pap taught him, that people are individuals and there are good and bad from every race. He gradually learns that the racism and discrimination are wrong.

The first people Huck meets in California are a Hispanic couple camping at the Salton Sea, and they are kind to him and feed him. So, his lessons on humanity begin right away with his arrival in California and continue throughout the novel. His best friend, Tom Sawyer, is black. The ladies he lives with are a lesbian couple. So, he learns to accept people’s differences and to discard the old prejudices his Pap taught him. His Pap turns out to be the worst one of the people he deals with during the entire novel.

I think the update to this classic tale pulls off its goal of bringing to light an issue of our time. It does it in the same way Twain intended with the original. It demonstrates through the power of character and story that people need to be more accepting of each other and their differences, and that the battle over immigration is not a faceless war, but one with many individuals, all with their own stories and struggles. They are not all out to take over the jobs. They are human beings too and just want to make a living like everyone else. The takeaway message of this novel seems to be that we really can all get along and be accepting of each other and value each other for our differences. We can be friends and even best friends. So, let’s leave all that negative stuff behind and let’s go have an adventure together.

This book was written well and had beautiful illustrations. I loved The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when I was younger and a re -imagined version sounded right up my alley! The characterization was great and the story interesting.

Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A 21st century adventure story, The Ballad of Huck and Miguel by Tim DeRoche features Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, other familiar characters and some new ones. Huck finds himself in Los Angeles with his ne'er-do-well father who gets involved with some hoodlums and soon disappears. Judge Thatcher steps in to help Huck and pretty soon the adventure really begins. I don't want to give away anymore of the story. But I do suggest that you read this charming tale of Huckleberry Finn at his finest.
Thank you, Net Galley for allowing me to read this advance copy.