First things first: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is going to focus primarily on Tom Sawyer. The young (we're talking elementary school age) native of St. Petersburg, Missouri has a liking for escapades, exploits, deeds of derring-do, or what you might call adventures. Note that the book is called The Adventures (with emphasis on the plural) rather than The Adventure of Tom Sawyer. Little Tom gets up to a lot of trouble by book's end, and his various feats are not all related.