The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) by Mark Twain is set in Dawson's Landing, a small slaveholding town on the Mississippi River. Roxana, an enslaved woman only one-sixteenth Black, secretly switches her infant son with her master's son to protect him from being sold. The boys grow up with exchanged identities: her son Tom becomes a spoiled heir, while the real heir lives as a slave. When Tom murders Judge Driscoll, the eccentric lawyer David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson, a fingerprint collector long mocked by the town, solves the crime through forensic evidence. The deception is exposed, and Tom is sold down the river, a bitter commentary on slavery, race, and identity.
