Growing up along the Mississippi River, Samuel Clemens and a boyhood friend, Tom Blankenship, are always getting into trouble. This relationship becomes the basis for the character Huckleberry Finn.

Sam’s boyhood town, Hannibal, Missouri, is located on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. Sam falls in love with the idea of becoming a steamboat captain but later becomes a newspaper reporter and decides to head west to broaden his experience.

He is swept up in the search for gold and he and a couple other guys search first near Carson City, NV and then the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They manage to eke out $8.00/day and decide this is not for them. They take their hard-earned savings and try to double it in San Francisco.

Sam later marries and they decide to move and live back east. Life gives him many harsh lessons including losing his daughters and ultimately his wife.

Life is not easy for Samuel Clemens and his alternate ego, Mark Twain, who with an abundance of life experience to write about, then becomes a great traveling orator and humorist. This book, however, reveals the difficult life that this American legend lived and the many tragedies that he experienced. 5 stars - CE Williams

I can’t fault the detail and content of this book. It styles itself as a biographical novel and I think that is what I wasn’t expecting. I prefer a straight factual biography.

This book was a delight to read! Samuel Longhorne Clemens came into this world at the same time Haley's Comet crossed the nighttime sky. Born prematurely, he was a sickly youngster until around the age of two when his mother, Jane, was told to try giving him sulfur water (from a mineral spring) to drink. That did the trick! With the family not doing financially well in the town they were living in, when he was 12 they moved to Hannibal, Missouri. His adventures began.

In the telling of this book we find a witty, intelligent and humorous man. His books are classics drawn upon some of his adventures. As a lecturer and humorist, there was none better. Back in grade school (eons ago) I was asked "who is your favorite author?" My immediate response was "Mark Twain." I can see how his real life and adventures made its way into his books. Because of a journal he kept, the reader was able to see into his private world...his thoughts, how his mind worked.

This was a fun book to read, thoroughly enjoyable. I have to thank John Isaac Jones for this gift, bringing Mark Twain back to life with a rare glimpse of a natural "spinner" of stories. My thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Highly recommended!