Featuring the brilliantly drawn Roxanna, a mulatto slave who suffers dire conseq
uences after switching her infant son with her master's baby, and the clever Pud
d'nhead Wilson, an ostracized small-town lawyer, Twain's darkly comic masterpiec
e is a provocative exploration of slavery and miscegenation. Leslie A. Fiedler d
escribed the novel as "half melodramatic detective story, half bleak tragedy," n
oting that "morally, it is one of the most honest books in our literature." "Tho
se Extraordinary Twins, the slapstick story that evolved into Pudd'nhead Wilson,
provides a fascinating view of the author's process.
