LEAD:
There is a very creepy scene in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn where Huck and Joe come upon a wrecked house floating down the Mississippi. Inside they find the dead body of a man who we learn, at the end of the book, was Huck's drunken abusive father. That's the starting point for Jon Clinch's new novel Finn.

Published by Random House.

RUNS: 6:10


END CUE: "...published by Random House."