Huck is a young, naive white boy fleeing from his drunken, dangerous Pa and Jim is a runaway slave longing to be reunited with his family. Flung together by circumstance, they journey down the Mississippi together on a log raft, each in search of his own definition of freedom. Their daring adventures along the way provide both entertainment and a satirical look at the moral values of the Deep South of the 1800s.

In the California apple country, 900 migratory workers rise up "in dubious battle" against the landowners. The group takes on a life of its own, stronger than its individual members and more frightening. Led by the doomed Jim Nolan, the strike springs from his tragic idealism, from the "courage never to submit or yield."

"In Monterey, on the California coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that is just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of "Cannery Row", the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears - from Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter....