The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1883) novel by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). The sensible and resourceful Huck narrates this story, in which he, a poor near-orphan, becomes the moral center when everyone around him seems to be hypocritical or corrupt. Against what he knows is the law, Huck befriends Jim, an escaped black slave, and Huck struggles with his conscience as he helps Jim make his way to freedom.

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930) follows the difficult Anse Bundren and his children is they travel through Mississippi, bringing their dead wife and mother, Addle, to her birthplace for burial. The disjointed narrative is told through the interior monologues of fifteen different characters, among them the Bundren children.

Sights Unseen by Kaye Gibbons (1995) is narrated by Hattie, who looks back from adulthood at how her mother's mental Illness affected their...