Set in pre-Civil War Missouri and traversing the whole Mississippi River region, Twain’s sequel to his picaresque novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer follows Huck as he stages his own death to escape his alcoholic father and sets off on an odyssey marked by comedy, danger, and adventure. He soon encounters Jim, the enslaved man working for Huck’s erstwhile guardians, the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson. Jim had run away after overhearing the ladies discuss selling him, and Huck and Jim set sail on a raft down the Mississippi, headed for the Free State of Illinois. Twain's piquant humor finds full expression in this nineteenth-century literary classic, and Huck's frank, boyish narration, told in the vernacular of his time, offers true merriment.