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Capital READ 2010

Capital READ 2010: Finn by Jon Clinch

Read the book; join us for events with the author in October.

Finn is an American Library Association Notable Book, and was named one of the year's top novels by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle's first-ever Best Recommended List and the Sargent First Novel Prize.

Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body–flayed and stripped of all identifying marks–drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim’s identity, shape Finn’s story as they will shape his life and his death.

Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn’s terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn’s mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity–not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America’s past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.

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For more information about the author. Visit Jon clinch's website at http://www.jonclinch.com

The book Finn has its' own website at http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/finn/

MRRL Librarian, Claudia Schoonover is the Capital READ coordinator. If you have any questions about Capital READ, please contact her at 573-634-6064 ext. 245