The Ballad of Huck & Miguel

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.

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.

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.

The author did an amazing job capturing the adventure and suspense of the Huckleberry Finn story. After his father is wanted for his part in a drug deal, Huck goes to live with two women. The stable hand, Miguel befriends him. When Huck's father shows up at the house one night and injures the women, Miguel saves Huck's life. They start on an adventure on the river that runs through LA. I love the fact that you could take Huck Finn from Mark Twain's novel, pluck him out of the pages, and put him right into modern day LA. This book was amazingly well written and a nice adaptation from one of America's classics. I would dub this one of the best modern-day classics that I have ever read.

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.

A brilliant reweaving of a most beloved Twain tale.

In this new version, Huck and his father travel to California on a secret mission. Huck is an explorer, and living with an abusive father, he takes every chance he gets to run away. He does so in CA, and learns his father is there to do a drug deal. A moment of bravery enables Huck and his friend Tom Sawyer to intercede when things go awry. Because if them, the drug lord and his buddies are captured.

Unfortunately, Pap was not captured. Thwarted in his plans to get rich from drugs, Pap shows up again and again, even after Huck has been fostered out, and he's mad for blood. One encounter sends Huck fleeing down a great concrete-banked river with Miguel, an illegal immigrant accused of a savage attack perpetrated by Pap. Thus begins a harrowing adventure for Huck and Miguel, as they try to flee Pap’s rage, and get Miguel to a safe place.

If you couldn't have guessed from the title, The Ballad of Huck and Miguel is a reimagined Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This is a grittier Huckleberry Finn, set in urban LA of modern times. Interspersed through the book are beautiful illustrations  One of Twain's most well-known, and scandalous works, Huckleberry Finn shows up on banned book lists quite a bit and I can see Huck & Miguel joining it.

And what higher praise can you give a story, truly? To ban something means you feel threatened by it, by the thinking it might prompt. Like the original Twain story, DeRoche deals with themes of race, the corrupting influence of civilisation, and superstition. The theme of immigration takes the place of slavery, turning the story into the perfect allegory against the current US immigration policies, and overall attitude of the country.

Huck is raised poor and uneducated (yet possesses far more wisdom than many PhD candidates). His father is a violent, abusive man who feels entitled, and who adheres to the belief that “Mexigrants” are taking over the country. Miguel humanises the “Mexigrants", helping Huck realise they're just people wanting to live and be free too, and are not deserving of the anger and hatred of the entitled masses who believe they are ruining the country. Huck himself seems to have an inner moral compass that supports human rights, and honourable action, so it doesn't take much for him to realise his father's rants against the “Mexigrants" was wrong.

The colloquial language invites us even deeper into Huck’s world, and his personality. I loved to see Huck shedding his past, and reassessing everything he'd been taught. Snakeskins show up twice, and play into the superstition theme carried over from the original, but they are a perfect metaphor for the changes Huck himself is going through. He is sloughing off an old life, and tainted perspectives like a snake sheds its skin and is, in a sense, 'reborn’. That his 'bully 'venture’ takes place travelling the concrete riverbed is apropos. His old life is sloughed off by the cleansing, purifying waters of the sinuous, snakey rivercourse.

Perfect for Twain fans, and worthy of being a modern American classic.

***This book was reviewed for the San Francisco Book Review.

Every time I went looking for a new book to read The Ballad of Huck and Miguel showed up on my radar. I admit prejudice against this book. I was prepared to start reading and close the book within 50 pages. But then I got involved with the “the full true story of how ….. Huck went on the run from the ‘thorities with a real live illegal Mexigrant”. And what a run it was. I was swept up in the calamities which befell nine-year-old Huckleberry Finn including being “almost shot by a Man with a donkeytail, almost getting killed by a gangster, making a deal with a Rapscallion, getting mixed up in a rebelution, and running always running from his Pap.

Written in the vernacular of an uneducated boy from St. Petersburg, Missouri, within a few pages it felt perfect. Huck is wise beyond his nine years and his perception of the people he meets serve him well. He is able to discern truth from “hocus” and has “too much of a conscience” to outright steal only allowing himself to borrow what he needs from time to time. He is the kid you want to have a conversation with and hear his “take” on the world and its inhabitants.

Totally entertaining, exceptionally insightful, I could not put this down and finished it in one sitting.

Thank you NetGalley and Redtail Press for a copy

Brilliant! It’s a precarious task to remake such a classic, and thankfully, this one is very well done. Huck, still as endearing and practical as he was in the original, goes off to LA and befriends an illegal immigrant. They have all sorts of adventures, from self-flushing toilets to drug dealing gangsters. Sounds crazy, but it works! Bravo!

Summary:

This is Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, if he was alive today. Leaving a back-water town that hasn’t changed in decades, Huck is forced to go with Pap, his abusive father, to California. Having lived with all of Pap’s prejudices, there’s a lot to learn and understand as he moves further into today’s world. When he escapes his father, he begins his new adventure, learning about friendship, courage, and different walks of life. When things go south he and Miguel, an illegal immigrant he met at his foster home, travel down the “concrete river” of LA to get Miguel help and clear his name of a crime Pap committed.

My thoughts:
There is a lot to love about this book. The plot was well developed and the characters were developed and on point for their classic counterparts, while still being relevant in today’s world…. well, Huck is incredibly backwards but that’s explained by his upbringing. I loved Huck, whose good intentions and heart shine through in this book. Miguel was an amazing character, blasting away Huck’s preconceived notions and bringing him into his own circle. The bond between the two is undeniable. I also enjoyed Huck’s foster parents, and thought they were interesting and brought a good dynamic to the book.

Unfortunately it had it’s faults. Huck’s phrasing and language often drove me insane. Now, I am having trouble remembering it’s classic counterpart, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (It’s been twenty years, after all), but I thing I felt the same way then. It was often hard to get through some of Huck’s narrative without wanting to scream the correct words. I don’t know if it just rubbed me wrong because I was reading it… part of me feels like it wouldn’t have been as terrible if I were listening to it in audio-book. Another reviewer on Goodreads described it as the author wanting to have it be modern, but keeping Huck in the 1800’s. This is a good description, but even then the wording is often incorrect. That did drag me out of the book multiple times. As far as the plot goes, some of it gets… well… a bit more than absurd. I feel that, again, that is in keeping with Twain’s more satirical spirit. With all of this, it was still a four star book for me. normal star ratingnormal star ratingnormal star ratingnormal star rating

On the adult content scale, there is language which includes racial slurs, drugs and violence. I give it a seven. While I think parents might wish to look at it before anyone under thirteen, I would have no problem giving it to a preteen myself. Parental Guidance

I was lucky enough to receive an eARC of this book from Netgalley and Redtail Press in exchange for an honest review. My thanks!

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

A Huckleberry Finn retelling, more like what would happen if Huck, a dreamer at heart, runs away and reached California? The Ballad of Huck and Miguel is one such story. Huck lands up in California because he ran away from Pap and other intense, but super fun events. And that’s when he meets Miguel, an illegal immigrant (or rather, Mexigrant), And soon they become friends. Miguel has fatherly instincts towards Huck and in a series, if rather unfortunate events Huck and Miguel set on an adventure.

But this is no ordinary adventure because there are dangers lurking in the shadows. The author has presented to us the same fun-loving and extremely curious Huckleberry. His zeal to enquire and learn takes him places. The author hasn’t forgotten Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry’s other half. He had his own role to play, and a rather intense one- the savior.

The language is extremely simple and gives you countryside feels. There are spelling mistakes which are adorable (because Huck is illiterate and is the narrator). Huck’s view of the world where illegal immigration is common and how badly they are treated is also very evident. Though the matter has been displayed in an amusing way, the underlying message is loud and clear.

And then there are these adorable illustrations that are a treat to watch while reading. The Adventure of Huck and Miguel is an adventure of a lifetime and a short trip down the memory lane. The story is extremely heartwarming. It is all about finding ‘home’ because home is where the heart is.

Great book. Loved it very much. The characters were amazing. Love Miguel and Huck

Imagine Huckleberry Finn in modern day adventures...not easy to do, but Tim DeRoach has done it beautifully and movingly. It took me a while to warm up to the conceit, and there are some extraneous chapters that seem forced (e.g., The Grangerfords). But I’m glad I stuck with it. Warm-hearted, thrilling, and funny, it will indeed make a good movie. Read through Netgalley.

I loved how this book was told in a new and modern way and kept the spirit of Huckleberry Finn while doing it. I enjoyed every moment of it and hoping to see a sequel!

Tim DeRoche recreates Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as taking place in modern Los Angeles and does a credible job. Perhaps there’s no need for such an endeavor, but why not? DeRoche decides to take a different time frame for Finn to focus on and it’s amusing to see how he lets Finn cogitate on what’s happening now.

Finn tries to escape from his abusive father, Pap, but Pap is difficult to shake off. He’s mean, with a miserable life of drinking, drugs, and abusing people. He’s determined to raise Huck as he sees fit. Huck travels with him to Los Angeles in a farcical search of wealth but finds the quest to be untenable and tries to set off on his own. Pap isn’t going to allow it so the entanglement continues, Huck never quite freeing himself from his father’s hateful presence.

Tom Sawyer, you remember him, has re-established himself in L.A. and Huck tries to connect with him. He, along with new friend, an illegal immigrant named Miguel, get involved with a lesbian couple who want to “civilize” Huck and, in the process further alienate Pap who considers homosexuality a sin and declares that “Mexigrants” such as Miguel are ruining the country. Along the way Huck encounters strange animals, beastly humans, drug deals, beatings, kindness, religious fervor, politics, and reality television.

The chase sets off down the cement encased Los Angeles River with Huck and Miguel on a homemade raft and Pap pursuing on the overseeing streets. The adventures are many, but the different environment allows Huck to see and comment on many modern scenes and topics, to give his homespun views. Using back home vernacular, the author presents some amusing new words that uphold Twain’s vision of the Huckleberry Finn character.

I found the book to be amusing, cleverly crafted, and refreshing. The woodcuts by Daniel Gonzalez are wonderful and deserve to be honored in a book of their own. Don’t miss this one.

For me, it was a wild, amazing and very brave journey. The stories when they meet the good strangers, the good colonel, the snake that bites Miguel. And also when Huck had to find his antidote. But Pap did not give up and found them. The courage of Huck's attitude was tested on this journey. And with a very beautiful narrative language, Tim DeRoche describes this journey as a very binding main story. This story provides a valuable moral value to all adults. We do not have to look down on those who run away from their place. They are just fighting and it's time for us to accept it. People like Miguel are not always bad, and Huck has proven that. #Huckandmiguel #NetGalley

A modern retelling of Huckleberry Finn covers all the stops along the original trip with a modern twist for each. Using the framework of Twain's classic, DeRoche touches on social issues such as the drug trade and immigration. However, with the brevity of the book no topic is fully examined. The malapropisms are too heavy handed at times and makes it hard to believe a person could exist today with such limited awareness of popular culture. Though it has its weaknesses, I think the book offers many areas to discuss and is an enjoyable read.

Great companion piece to the Adventures Huck Finn. Students really enjoy it. It has a waiting list.