Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore

Book excerpt: From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore is a powerful, disturbing, and eye-opening dispatch from the homefront that will take its place alongside the works of Antony Lucas, Robert Coles, and Tracy Kidder. Ron Powers' hometown is Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain, and therefore birthplace of our image of boyhood itself. Powers returns to Hannibal to chronicle the horrific story of two killings, both committed by minors, and the trials that followed. Seamlessly weaving the narrative of the events in Hannibal with the national withering of the very concept of childhood, Powers exposes a fragmented adult society where children are left adrift, transforming isolation into violence. "Powers's storytelling style keeps such good control over the pacing, readers will know they're not headed for a disappointment at the ending." - Publishers Weekly