As Mark Twain's masterpiece opens, Huck is running from his murderous father while Jim is fleeing slavery. The pair join forces and pilot a raft down the Mississippi, encountering a crash with a steamboat, con men and traveling actors, southern gentility and lynch mobs, and the final threat from those forces determined to restore the order broken by Jim and Huck. Their voyage down the mighty river becomes a tragicomic journey through the American psyche.