The entire book is based on a little town called Dawson's Landing in Missouri and the separation between blacks and whites at the time. One day a man called David Wilson came to the quiet town. He made a sarcastic comment about "owning half of that dog." This severely hurt the reputation of his law practice. At Judge Driscoll's house one of the slaves named Roxy switched her baby with the Judge's baby so her baby would grow up as a white child. They are almost identical so there is no way to tell them apart. Pudd'nhead began to take fingerprints of everybody in town. Tom and Chambers grew up with there new parents. Tom ended up going off to college. While Tom was at college, the town was robbed by a woman who nobody had seen except Puddn'head when he was looking into the Judges house. He saw the girl in Tom's room. He knew that Tom was at college so it couldn't be a friend of Tom's. Roxy was set free by Percy Driscoll, the brother of the Judge. She began to work on the steamboats. Tom began to rack up gambling debts from New Orleans. He kept stealing from the town but learned that most of the pawn shops had been notified about the stolen stuff. He stole all the stuff for nothing. Tom found Roxy and sold her down the river to help him out of debt. Back in Dawsons Landing the Judge and Luigi dueled. The Judge won showing his power and proving to the town that he could be a good leader. Tom decided to steal from the Judge. He went into his own room to gather some of his things and saw the Judge in his room. He quickly grabbed the knife and stabbed the judge and ran leaving the knife at the scene. The twins were the first to the scene so they were immediate suspects. Tom of course was not even considered because he was supposed to be in college. Pudd'nhead took the fingerprints off of the knife and found that they were actually Tom's. He was able to prove the twins innocence and proved that Tom was guilty. Tom went to jail and Chambers inherited the estate.