A brilliant reweaving of a most beloved Twain tale.
In The Ballad of Huck and Miguel, Huck and his father travel to California on a secret mission. Huck is an explorer. 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. Their actions lead to a bad end for the drug lord and his buddies.
Unfortunately, Pap evaded capture. Thwarted in his plans to get rich from drugs, Pap shows up again and again. Even after Huck finds a safe foster home, Pap’s still mad for blood. One encounter sends Huck fleeing down a great concrete-banked river with an unlikely companion. Illegal immigrant Miguel, falsely accused of a savage attack perpetrated by Pap flees with Huck. Thus begins a harrowing adventure for Huck and Miguel, as they flee Pap’s rage, and seek safe haven.
As the title suggests, The Ballad of Huck and Miguel reimagines The 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 current attitude of the country.
We meet Huck as a poor and uneducated lad (yet possessed of far more wisdom than many PhD candidates). His father is a violent, abusive man who feels entitled, a male version of a Karen. A Chad? Pap 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. The philosopher in me felt a level of satisfaction at Huck’s emotional growth. He shed his past, reassessing everything his upbringing had taught him was “right”. 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. After all, original Huck sloughed off his old life by the cleansing, purifying waters of the sinuous, snakey Mississippi rivercourse.
Perfect for Twain fans, and worthy of being a modern American classic.
