In Graham Greene's lingo this short book of Twain's is An Entertainment rather than a novel. It was
a fairly fun sketch of a hardscrabble family in a small town the husband-father of which had a wish for a rich son-in-law. Things go up and go down, a stranger "falls into" the story, there is lots of talk, all Hell breaks loose, and finally most things work out. ( )

Twain wanted a collection of tales on the same plot outline by other authors of his time. Project never got off the ground. A bit of a mystery, a bit of a melodrama, with comedic touches.

Interesting short story,abt 50 pages.This book was lost from 1910-1945, a legal battle for rights ensued.In 2000 Buffalo & Erie County Public Library acquired the rights to publish this book.Twain has a notable history in Buffalo,NY. The foreward and afterward are interesting on their own. ( )

A book that took 125 years to publish. How could I pass this up when I saw it on the shelves while browsing my library's selection of Mark Twain's novels? To be honest, I probably would have been just fine passing on it. It's a short story, a very short story; half the book is commentary by Ray Blount Jr. Me and short stories typically don't get along well, and that was the case with this one as well. There just wasn't enough substance for this readers taste.

Despite that, the history of the novel is fascinating. In the midst of writing Huckleberry Finn, Twain was struck by an idea to come up with a skeleton plot and then have The Atlantic publish novelettes that he and other leading authors of the time, including Henry James, would write based upon said skeleton plot. He was obssessed with the idea and wrote numerous letters over the next couple decades to the publisher of The Atlantic, a close friend of his, to make it happen. Unfortunately for Twain, it never did. But now, over a century later, at least part of his dream has been made possible.

It is a strange little story however, and really makes you wonder, just what did Twain have against Jules Verne. And why would Twain name a hated character after his best friend, whom was known to be the complete opposite in almost every way of his fictional counterpart? The story takes place in a fictional Missouri town in which a young man is discovered laying in the snow, with no obvious means of having arrived there. That is the mystery, and this mystery leads to both the murder and the marriage.

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A short novel exhibiting classic Train cynicism. ( )