The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Tom stumbles through Sunday-school verses he can't remember, a courtship conducted in slate drawings and a scrawled confession, and a pinchbug that turns a solemn church service into slapstick. The prose delights in all of it, breaking now and then into mock-philosophy about the difference between work and play, or lingering with affection over a doped cat sailing out a window. St. Petersburg is drowsy and small, and every boyish scheme is treated with the grandeur it deserves.

Then, one midnight in the graveyard, Tom and Huckleberry Finn go to try a dead-cat cure for warts—and see something they were never meant to see. A grave robbing turns to argument, argument to murder, and suddenly Tom carries a secret far heavier than any prank. He and Huck swear an oath in blood and bury it, terrified of the man who did it.

What follows braids the comedy of childhood with the dread of a real crime. Tom's games run one way; his conscience runs another. Somewhere between the fence and the graveyard is a whole world of summer, mischief, first love, and the slow, reluctant beginnings of growing up.