Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain - Hardcover

A refreshingly imaginative recreation of Samual Clemens boyhood years in Hannibal and how he drew on these years for the rest of his life as he wrote under the name of Mark Twain.. In Powers exploration of Twains formative years he emphasizes that Twains childhood was not an innocent time full of benign encounters, but rather was one marked by numerous deaths and his fathers bankruptcy. Twain dealt with those tragedies in a uniquely American manner, through humor and the tall tale. }Twain was a distinctly American writer. From age ten when he boarded his first Mississippi steamer to his first encounter with a traveling mesmerizer (from which Twain gained a penchant for acting and a flair for spectacle); from the brooding sense of guilt and fear of eternal damnation inculcated into him at church to the superstitions and stories of witchcraft he learned from the Blacks on his farm, Twain was shaped by the people of Hannibal, Missouri and by a distinctly American culture. Interwoven between Twains childhood experiences are various themes of nature expressed in beautifully written passages that evoke scenes like those of the Mississippi River as it flows through Hannibal and of the mysterious, foreboding cave in which Twain used to play.During his childhood, Mark Twain learned to negotiate the dangerous waters of experience and turn trials into humorous stories that shaped the American literary tradition. }