Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was 'Mark Twain,' a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom's childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain's novel. Now married to Tom's cousin Sid Hopkins, Becky has children of her own to protect while the men of Missouri are off fighting their 'un-Civil' War. But when tragedy strikes at home, Becky embarks on a phenomenal quest to find her husband and save her family. Bold and brave beyond the expectations of her sex, the wildly conflicted Becky struggles to reconcile her womanly obligations with her fiercely independent spirit, and is haunted by the lies she's told and the love she betrayed. Can she ever forget the maddening Tom Sawyer, the boy who stole her heart as a little girl? And when she is old, and Huck and Tom and Twain only memories, whose shadow will still lie beside her?