Contents copyright 2007-9, Jon Clinch

HUCK has "The Raftsmen's Passage."
Now FINN has "The Dog."

Just before Huckleberry Finn went to press, Mark Twain's publisher asked him to remove an episode from near the start of Chapter 16. The deleted pages showed Huck eavesdropping on a group of raftsmen by night, and over time became known to scholars as "The Raftsmen's Passage" or "The Raft Chapter." The material appeared in Life on the Mississippi, and was first restored to Huck in a 1944 edition.

Now, a missing piece of Finn has surfaced. Its provenance is different from "The Raftsmen's Passage," though; instead of being omitted from the original novel, it arrived afterward.

Readers of Finn know that many events in the novel spring from the memorable moment when Huckleberry Finn found his father's dead body—naked and bloody—in a floating house. Transposed into my book, the peculiar objects in that death room—whiskey bottles, a baby's bottle, men's and women's clothing, two black cloth masks, a wooden leg—appear along the twisted trail of Finn's life.

There was a dog collar in that room, too. And it sparked some ideas.

The result—"The Dog"—is available here for Amazon's Kindle. It sells for about a dollar, and you can be reading it in a few seconds. It's also here as a free pdf.

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A New Novel's on the Way: KINGS OF THE EARTH.

Random House has acquired Jon's new novel for publication next summer.

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Awards for FINN.

Finn is an ALA Notable Book, and was named one of 2007's top novels by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor and Book Sense. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle's first-ever Best Recommended List and the Sargent First Novel Prize.

"The Dog," a story that might be considered Finn's missing chapter, is available here as an Amazon Kindle eBook and here as a free pdf.