When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Percival Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion as never before.

A brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing, he’ll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks. With the help of the brainy and brainwashed astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala Kitu learns that Sill’s desire to become a literal Bond villain originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.