Review: Move over Zane Grey and Louie L'Amour as Western authors
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 15, 2013
This story leaves no doubt about who the good guys and the bad guys are.  And amazingly enough although it uses the same slang and old fashioned heroics, it is thoroughly entertaining.  As older teenagers, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer joined the Confederate army during the Civil War, and as they admitted, for adventure, not because they were abolitionists.  Tom was shot in the arm and after Huck saw piles of amputated arms and legs as the doctors' procedure for savings a life, Huck had read that a Frenchman said the wound had to be cleansed well to save the limb.  Huck gave Tom a bottle of whiskey to drink, pried out the small lead ball in this arm, and then washed it out good.  The young men were sick of army life and they hid out until Tom regained his strength and they could travel.They decided to go West and spent a few days with a southern farmer and his family.  While Tom was recuperating, three Union soldiers came to the farm house, the Sergeant was drunk, mean and decided to take the farmer's wife and beautiful eighteen year old daughter to the barn to satiate his lust.  But Huck was in the barn with Tom and Huck shot the Sergeant and then one of the privates who raised his gun.  The other private raised his gun, but then lowered it.  The southerners didn't know what to do with the surviving private, but eventually they learned he was real young, his name was Jed Blevins and they released him.Huck, Tom and Jed continued going West.  Huck was going to Missouri; Tom wanted to go to China after hearing about it; and Jed decided to go to California.  The story then splits between the escapades of each of these three men, adventures which matured them and gave them a philosophy by which to live.  The book ends with the three of them meeting up again and joining forces to make life better for others.Although it is doubtful that we would enjoy Samuel Clemons' stories and colloquialisms today as much as we did when they were new, reading this story of these children/young men now well experienced heroes is truly entertaining, reads easily and actually becomes a page turner, making it a quick read.  I loved it and I think many readers will also, no matter how sophisticated their usual reading literature is.I was given this book for an honest review.