I highly recommend this book for everyone! It is beautifully written, clever, funny, a fantastic adventure story, told from the perspective of the slave (James). Having read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a plus, but not required to enjoy this gem.

Excellent!

James, Percival Everett, author; Dominic Hoffman, narrator
As you might have guessed, James, or Jim, is the subject of this novel. James is a character in what has often been called Mark Twain’s greatest achievement, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. This is the esteemed author, Everett Percival’s interpretation of the life of that James, and although the story line is similar, it is not exactly the same. Although he is a slave, forbidden to learn, James is self-educated and wise. He is a family man who is devoted to his wife and daughter. Necessity has taught him, and will continue to teach him, additional skills needed for his survival. He is patient, centered and thoughtful. Although he is determined, good-tempered, and has self-control, he is also driven to be free and to free his family by any means he finds necessary. He is alternately portrayed as learned or uneducated. This James could represent what we call “the everyman”.
Huckleberry, or Huck as most people call him, is just a boy and a bit of a simple thinker, though there are moments when he has deep emotional insight. The secrets of his past and hopes for his future are revealed. He is being cared for by Miss Watson who hopes to turn him into a proper gentleman. His abusive father, a drunk, comes in and out of his life. Huck runs away and stages his own death to escape him. Huck is compassionate and loyal. He is determined to have adventures without fully understanding that some adventures are dangerous. Huck and Jim are good friends even though Huck is white and Jim is black, even though Huck is free and Jim is a slave, and even though they are a generation apart.
On his own, when no one was watching, James would sneak into the office of Judge Thatcher and look at the books on his shelves. In this way he taught himself to read. He also taught himself to write. He is presented as quite the gentleman with good manners, hidden eloquence, and sincerity. Because the slaves understand that white people are under the impression, and also enjoy thinking that black folks are ignorant, they have their own uneducated way of speaking to each other. Jim teaches them that slave language to keep them safe, and hopefully, in the good graces of the whites in charge. A slow, uneducated slave, is less of a threat, and thus, a safer slave. Whites do not believe that inside the black bodies there are intelligent, sentient human beings, but they are wrong. The slaves are just pretending.
James is property, as is his wife Sadie and his daughter Lizzie. They are all enslaved. Although James is light skinned, he cannot pass for white, and in the novel his hair seems to be the dead giveaway. There are some slave owners who believe they are good owners and some slaves that are grateful to their owners. However, the fact that the slaves are worked to death, kept uneducated, that the women were raped and bred to have more slaves, the families were separated and sold, that their punishments were often barbaric and worse, negates that idea totally. When James learns that he is going to be sold and separated from his wife, he realizes that they will never find each other again. He runs away instead, vowing to return to rescue or buy them. A bounty is placed on his head. Because Huck runs away at the same time, and is believed to be dead, James is suspected of not only of being a runaway, but he is also suspected of Huck’s murder.
Although this novel tackles problems that are ongoing, even today, it does not politicize any of its themes, and it is written with a very clear message. The issues of slavery, exploitation, sexual abuse, prejudice, violence, poverty, immorality et al, are exposed as reprehensible and unacceptable as events unfold on Jim’s journey to what he hopes will be freedom. James worked out some of his problems in his dreams. He has conversations with the scholars and philosophers he read. Would that it could be so simple! He is alternately calls himself Jim or James. When he fully becomes James will he be free in his own mind as well as in the world?
His character possessed all of our human qualities, good and evil, and they dwelled comfortably inside his body and mind. He was able to control his impulses, so that most often his actions did not ever disappoint me. He did what he had to do to survive. He was moral and just, and deserving of great respect. His character and life exposed the unacceptability of prejudice everywhere.
The author’s use of the N-word made me flinch each time it was used. I found it unsettling, but realize the author was using the authentic language of the times. The novel uncovers the unacceptable treatment of the slave in a way that allows the reader not to be defensive about so terrible a stain on our past. The reader feels compassion and sadness, and even shame for those who participated in this abominable practice of slavery. The book illustrates that character and talent, knowledge and aptitude, are not outward features. Our language, appearance, religion or place of origin, etc., have nothing at all to do with our self-worth. We are all the same and all entitled to the same opportunities.
There are the abused and the abusers in this world, the oppressed and the oppressors. Will it ever change? Is there ever a time when it is justified for the abused to become the abuser? Is that the very definition of why there is war? I wondered, at the end of the novel, if the Civil War actually helped to free the slaves or did it simply assign them a different kind of bondage? Written with just the right touch of humor and solemnity, this book is excellent.