The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

“But as strict as he can be about never lying, I’m pretty sure Harold won’t mind if I bend the truth to stay alive.” 

Homer has a knack for telling tall tales—he’s a born storyteller—but his big brother objects to this callous disregard for truth and insists that Homer stop. Now that Harold has been kidnapped and sent to the army, Homer no longer feels himself under any such obligation, because saving Harold is more important, and lies told during that effort are justified.

“The house on the hill gets bigger and bigger the closer I get. There are puffy white clouds reflected in the windows and the clouds are moving against the sky, and that makes it look like the whole house is moving, too. It’s like I can feel the earth turning and have to be careful where to put my feet. The whole thing makes me so dizzy that the gentle green hill seems to get steeper and steeper and finally it tips up and I’m facedown in the grass.”

Forced by bounty hunter Smelt to talk his way into Jebediah Brewster’s home and spy out the location of runaway enslaved people hidden there, Homer approaches the big house, but its lavish beauty overwhelms the impoverished orphan. Already faint from hunger, he collapses on the front lawn.

“Something in me wants to say my third cousin Curtis McTavit has been trading gems for his whole life, and recently come into possession of the world’s largest ruby that he got off the widow of Blackbeard the pirate, but that the ruby is cursed. Ever since he got the ruby, poor McTavit lives in fear. He’s barricaded himself inside his own dungeon and believes that the ruby speaks to him in the ghostly voices of all it has cursed. Course I don’t have a cousin named Curtis McTavit, or any cousin I’m aware of, and I clamp my jaw shut until the urge passes.”

Sitting in the immense kitchen of the wealthy Jebediah Brewster while the cook, Mrs. Bean, prepares for him a plate of pancakes and bacon, Homer starts telling elaborate lies about himself. As entertaining as these stories can be, they fool no one, and when the wealthy and intimidating gemstone tycoon Jebediah Brewster sits down with him, Homer manages to hold his tongue.

“‘Darky’ is not a proper word,’ he says, very stern. ‘If a man has dark skin […] do not refer to his complexion. Does the Lord care if we be pink or brown? I assure thee, He does not.’” 

Jebediah Brewster is a devout Quaker who believes that slavery is an abomination and that Black people should be treated with respect. Homer refers to Samuel Reed with a disparaging nickname commonly uttered by White people, and Mr. Brewster upbraids him for speaking callously of another person simply because of his skin color. 

“‘Thousands have come this way,’ he explains. ‘They are given safety at this station and many others like it. Men like Samuel Reed risk their own freedom so that others may be free. And men like Mullins and Smelt are always waiting in the shadows, eager to betray them for a few pieces of silver. The evil that men do for money continues to astound me.’” 

Mr. Brewster describes the Underground Railroad that helps escaped enslaved people find freedom in Canada. He condemns bounty hunters who kidnap the runaways and return them to slave owners in exchange for a fee.

“It’s amazing what goes by the windows on a train. Farms and fields and forests, and rows of wooden houses, and big brick mills. Like we’re floating through a storybook and each turn in the track is a new page, and it’s a story I never heard before so I don’t know how it will end.” 

Homer has barely been outside his hometown, and his first ride on a train amazes him with its speed and all the new places it passes through. Homer’s world is expanding rapidly as he moves forward on his great adventure. 

“Here’s something I didn’t know, but soon found out: When a lawyer shakes your hand and smiles with just his teeth, you best run for your life.” 

Homer is just beginning to learn the hard lessons of life out in the big world, as Kate and Frank Nibbly work to defraud the young boy and his guardian, Mr. Willow. 

“The really amazing thing is, I can’t wait to see the show, and I’m in it.” 

Homer is the Amazing Pig Boy, and tonight is his first performance, so Homer is excited. The circus will follow the troops, and Homer, as a circus member, will search for his brother. Meanwhile, he gets to be a star of the stage. 

“Good evening to all you brave gentlemen! Welcome to the Caravan of Miracles! May Almighty God bless the Union Army and deliver it from losing, time and again! With all you new recruits being trained to kill your fellow man, surely victory will soon follow! And to help you along the way, to ease the woes and pains of the battlefield, and the pinch of bedbugs in your soggy tents, and to improve the taste of the insects that infest your food, and, frankly, to give you courage when most needed, I, Professor Fenton J. Fleabottom, honored graduate of ancient universities in the Far East, have perfected a certain strong elixir. An elixir that will lift your spirits and put the gleam back in your eyes! An elixir containing a sure cure for what ails you! An elixir that will, from the very first sip, deliver you from evil, and place you in the soft, motherly bosom of mankind!” 

Professor Fleabottom opens the Caravan of Miracles show with an engrossing welcoming speech and a brief plug for the medicines available for sale at the end of the show. The professor expresses sardonic humor about the North’s problems winning battles; it later develops that he’s a spy for the South; thus, his ironic comments have the deeper meaning that the speaker is an enemy and not a friend. 

“Fact is, I’m scaring myself half to death. Not just because I’m so filthy and ferocious looking, but because it’s fun being a pig boy. I like wiggling my glued-on tail. I like baring my teeth and squealing like a trapped animal. I like scaring soldiers who are twice as old as me, and who leap back like frightened children when I snap at their fingers. It’s fun to be amazing, to be the star of the show, to have everyone watching you—even if you have to act like a pig. And before long, I really do feel more animal than human.” 

Playing the Amazing Pig Boy suits Homer’s talents, and he has so much fun doing it that he wants to be let out so he can bite audience members. Slowly coming to terms with his past as an abused child living in a barn, Homer is learning that sometimes a boy’s most embarrassing traits can become his biggest assets. 

“You doubt me, but one day it will be true. Humanity will travel by air, and conduct war from the air, and seek peace in the air. The air is the future, not the land! Mankind must be made free! It must unshackle from the slavery of gravity and be free as the clouds, like Tilda and me. Air, do you hear me, air!” 

Balloon pilot Dennett Bobbins possesses the optimism of a true believer, and his predictions about the future are surprisingly accurate. Already, his balloons have helped Union forces learn about Confederate battle positions. Bobbins represents the energy of 19th-century inventors, people who would go on to develop much of the technology that laid the groundwork for the modern world. 

“My dear captain, there has been a mistake. I freely confess to selling elixir to the troops. You have me there, fair and square. I further admit that what I call ‘elixir’ is really whiskey with a little flavoring of red clover cough syrup. But never would I betray my country. Not for a million in gold!” 

Professor Fleabottom stands accused of passing information to the enemy, a form of treason punishable by execution. Fleabottom has asked locals about army configurations, but he explains that this is to help Homer find his underage brother and rescue him from army duty. Indeed, Fleabottom speaks truly that he would never betray his country—but his is the Confederacy, not the Union. 

“This high up you can’t see people or animals, and the cornfields look like ragged green patches on a big old quilt. Train tracks are like stitches in the ground, mending the world together. Beyond the forests and the fields and villages that look like toys, and the snaky silver rivers glinting in the sun, the great curved edge of the earth blends into the sky.” 

Homer’s perspective changes radically while looking down at the Earth from a balloon high in the sky. All those big things on the ground that impinge on his life suddenly seem small and unimportant. 

“Looking out over the world, it feels like I’m more than a runaway orphan boy, like I’m bigger than Homer Figg from Pine Swamp, Maine. Like I’ve somehow become everybody that ever lived, and we’re all of us watching over the earth like a mother hen watching over her egg. Which is a pretty crazy way to think. How could I be everybody that ever lived when I’m just one small person? Must be the thin air putting wild thoughts in my head, or fumes from the great balloon.” 

Staring down at the world, Homer begins to sense his connection to all things; he isn’t merely an impoverished boy but a part of the great procession of humanity through time. 

“Turns out a bull pit is where prisoners get confined, and in this case the pit is a stall in an old barn that’s been temporarily requisitioned by the Confederate forces who stand guard outside—requisitioned being another word for ‘stole,’ which is what armies do when they need things.” 

After jumping from a burning balloon and being captured by rebel soldiers, Homer is confined to a temporary jail. Homer is a quick study, and he learns that war is just like peacetime, in that dishonest practices are widespread in both. 

“Give up our slaves? Never! It’s slaves that make us rich. Slaves that make us happy. Slaves that make the pancakes, and churn the butter, and boil the syrup. My father once give me a slave whose job it was to follow me around and sweep away my footprints so I could pretend to be invisible. That’s how many slaves we owned, that he could spare one for erasing footprints.” 

His Southern captors suspect that Homer, who fell from a Union observation balloon, is a spy. Homer makes up one of his tall tales, hoping to convince them he’s not a threat. 

“That’s what I cling to: the thought of Harold somehow surviving. A fever dream of hope that I’ll find him before he’s killed and we’ll escape back to Maine and kindly Mr. Brewster will take us in, and we’ll live like proper people with beds to sleep in and three squares a day and milk and pie in the evenings. We’ll sit by the fire, jawing with Mr. Brewster, and help the escaped slaves if they still need help, and make sure Bob the horse has plenty of hay, and oats if he wants them. I’ll go to school like our Dear Mother intended and learn everything there is to know about the world. I’ll learn how to stop people from starving, and put an end to wars and slavery and meanness and cruelty, and Harold will manage the tourmaline mines for Mr. Brewster. In my dream Harold will be happy and strong and find him a wife to darn his socks of an evening and give him children that are never hungry and never get beat or locked in the barn like animals, and never have to run away to war to save their big brothers and see arms and legs being stacked like cordwood, or men dying of their wounds, or hear the keening of boys who miss their mothers and beg to see her in Heaven.” 

This quote is Homer’s testament, an expression of the yearnings of his soul. Imprisoned by rebel soldiers in a barn where the wounded arrive screaming, Homer wishes for a normal, happy life for himself and his brother, a life far from the horrors of the world, a life with love in it instead of hate, deceit, and terrible violence. Of all the changes he experiences, Homer’s deepest desire—to save Harold—remains steady, like a guiding star that directs him toward his destiny. 

“In the end it is a game of numbers. Not so much who has the will to win, but who has the most men and material to sacrifice. The war is a meat grinder, as you have seen.” 

The newspaperman informs Homer of the odds, over time, against a Southern victory. Lee must win at Gettysburg, or the huge resources of the North will swamp him and the South. 

“Later someone told me I must have covered five miles or more, from the rebel-held farmhouse to the Union lines at Culp’s Hill. To me it felt longer than forever. After a while I could not hear the fearsome thumping of the artillery, or the bee buzz of the bullets, or the crying of man and beast. It’s as if my ears have been stuffed with thick cotton, muffling the noise of war. The only thing I can really be sure of is my own heart slamming, and the beating heart of the pony as we ride on through the carnage, leaping over the dead and dying, our pace never slacking.” 

Riding directly through the battle, Homer somehow survives, but his heart is torn with the carnage he has seen. The fantastic luck of his ride, unharmed, across a field of death makes him wonder if his mother in Heaven is watching over him. His fierce focus, despite the dangers, help him to clear all obstacles and arrive at the place where he might find his brother. 

“The strangest thing is happening. All around me, all down the hillside, rebel soldiers are throwing down their rifles and surrendering. Begging mercy from the crazy men with the bayonets, men mad enough to charge without a shot to fire, into the face of certain death. Men who will not give up. Men who would rather die than be defeated.” 

Chamberlain’s order to his men to make a bayonet charge into the advancing rebel forces has such a surprising effect that it routs the Southerners. The sheer determination of the Union troops, despite the odds, wins the day. Homer, chasing after his brother and trying to protect him, is there to witness it. 

“Why did I stand my ground and hold the flag? ‘You’re only a boy and could have run away with no shame,’ he says, fixing his cold blue eyes on me. ‘What made you stand?’ Try as I might, I could not think of an answer that day. And all these years later, I still cannot say why I did not run. Surely I wanted to, but something made me stay.” 

Despite his desperate need to save his brother, Homer also needs to serve others, including his country. During his journeys in search of Harold, Homer also searches for purpose and meaning, and he finds it in his own heart. 

“Remember when we were boys? Remember how you saved my life by trying to kill me? Remember how you stood your ground, a small boy of twelve that never owned a pair of shoes? Don’t you worry, little brother, don’t you shed a tear. Wasn’t you that took my leg, it was the war.” 

Harold reminds Homer that he doesn’t hold his little brother accountable for shooting him in the leg, that Homer was doing the best he could to save Harold, and that, in the end, Homer succeeded. 

“Mr. Brewster says me and Harold are like tourmaline. We come in dirty but we wash up shiny, and he is proud to call us his kin and make us his heirs. It was him that suggested I write down my true adventures, so if you hate this book put the blame on Jebediah Brewster, not on me.” 

Homer’s spirit shines through his adventures—past the bluffing, fears, and strange alliances. On his journey, Homer learns that both he and his brother are good people.