Huckleberry Finn The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens by familiarizing the reader with the events of the book that preceded it, Tom Sawyer. In the town of St. Petersburg, which lies along the Mississippi River, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination a little too active for his own good, found a robber's stash of gold at the end …showed first 75 words of 293 total…

…showed last 75 words of 293 total…home in an attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably, and Pap soon returns to his old ways. He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the meantime has learned to read and to tolerate the Widow's attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged when the Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps the boy, holding him in a cabin across the river from St. Petersburg.