Home > Resources > Recommended Reading > Tom and Huck

Ron Powers, Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore, St. Martin's Press, 2001

This book is murder mystery, courtroom drama, autobiography, social analysis, and literary reflection all wrapped up in one riveting narrative of small town life in America’s hometown of Hannibal, MO. Powers (co-author of Flags of our Fathers: Hereos of Iwo Jima) returns to his boyhood home to investigate why two murders took place at the end of 1997 and the beginning of 1998. In describing what led these particular adolescents to commit their brutal crimes, Powers probes the unraveling of the larger fabric of American culture: the loss of "social capital", the breakdown of the family, the erosion of community, the spike in violence, and the vulnerability of children in America’s cities and towns. In reflecting on the nature of adolescence, he revisits the tales of Mark Twain as well as the memories of his own childhood. He explores the nature of growing up and the nature of human relationships.

Whether or not you can identify the actual places and persons in this story of recent news events in Hannibal, Missouri, you can identify with the story. This modern day tragedy leads the reader to consider the experiences and people and conversations that shape our own lives. What social factors support us in our upbringing? What environmental coordinates -- economic, social, spiritual, political, and relational, help plot out our days on earth? In reading such books, ones that sharpen our eye to the local conditions, we are reminded that our obedience to Jesus does not take place in a cultural vacuum. The question of nature versus nurture applies as much to the Christian life. Our spiritual nature is nurtured in the soil of places that are found on a road atlas and by people whose names are listed in the phone book.

-- TLT (January 27, 2004)