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.

"Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been...

When a group of friends in Mason, Missouri, decide to start a monthly supper club, they get more than they bargained for. The plan for congenial evenings-talking, laughing, and sharing recipes, homemade food, and wine-abruptly changes course one night when one of the women reveals something startlingly intimate. The supper club then becomes Confession Club, and the women gather weekly to share not only dinners but embarrassing misdeeds, deep insecurities,...

Back in Elmwood Springs, Missouri the experiences of a high-spirited octogenarian inspire a town to ask the question "Why are we here"?

After fifteen years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. At high school, if he isn't being pushed around, he's being completely ignored. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. Then Thomas Elgin moves in across the road. Coming to know the Elgins-a black family settling into a community built on a foundation of "us" and...