Puddn'head Wilson has in recent years been reassessed as one of Mark Twain's very best, most daring and innovative works. Roxanne who is certainly one of Twain's most colourful characters, is a nearly-white slave; she gives birth to a son whose father is a Virginian gentleman and she also brings up Tom, the son of Percy Driscoll a prosperous slave owner. The two boys are the same age and extremely similar in appearance. Child swapping, cross-dressing, deception and skulduggery ensure that this is a sensational and melodramatic novel as well as a declaration of Twain's sympathy to the plight of the enslaved African-American and reveals sinister forces that he felt to be threatening the American dream.