Trouble Begins at 8

"Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth."

So begins Sid Fleischman's ramble-scramble biography of the great American author and wit, who started life in a Missouri village as a barefoot boy named Samuel Clemens. Abandoning a career as a young steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, Sam took a bumpy stagecoach to the Far West. In the gold and silver fields, he expected to get rich quick. Instead, he got poor fast, digging in the wrong places. His stint as a sagebrush newspaperman led to a duel with pistols. Had he not survived, the world would never have heard of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn—or red-headed Mark Twain.

Samuel Clemens adopted his pen name in a hotel room in San Francisco and promptly made a jumping frog (and himself) famous. His celebrated novels followed at a leisurely pace; his quips at jet speed. "Don't let schooling interfere with your education," he wrote.

Here, in high style, is the story of a wisecracking adventurer who came of age in the untamed West; an ink-stained rebel who surprised himself by becoming the most famous American of his time. Bountifully illustrated.

As an award-winning young novelist, Sid Fleischman stated publicly that the only way he would write nonfiction was with a gun to his head. It turned out to be a squirt gun, for The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West is the third extraordinary true tale that has escaped his pen. It follows close behind the best-selling Escape! The Story of The Great Houdini and his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life.

Fleischman's books have been made into films, performed as plays, and translated into nineteen languages. The author was awarded the Newbery Medal for The Whipping Boy. His most recent novel is The Entertainer and the Dybbuk. Sid Fleischman lives in Santa Monica, California. You can drop in at www.SidFleischman.com.

—from the dust jacket