"Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his
teeth." So begins Sid Fleischman's ramble-scramble biography of the
great American author and wit, who started life in a Missouri village as
a barefoot boy named Samuel Clemens.
Abandoning a career as a young steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River,
Sam took a bumpy stagecoach to the Far West. In the gold and silver
fields, he expected to get rich quick. Instead, he got poor fast,
digging in the wrong places. His stint as a sagebrush newspaperman led
to a duel with pistols. Had he not survived, the world would never have
heard of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn--or red-headed Mark Twain.
Samuel Clemens adopted his pen name in a hotel room in San Francisco and
promptly made a jumping frog (and himself) famous. His celebrated novels
followed at a leisurely pace; his quips at jet speed. "Don't let
schooling interfere with your education," he wrote.
Here, in high style, is the story of a wisecracking adventurer who came
of age in the untamed West; an ink-stained rebel who surprised himself
by becoming the most famous American of his time. Bountifully
illustrated.