Mark Sway fits the literary tradition of the moral adolescent, a type best represented by Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from the 1884 novel. Huck and Mark live beyond the margins of respectable society, and they spring from family situations fraught with abuse. Strongly independent, they resist rules and parental authority. Yet these boys, whom society would classify as delinquent, appear in both novels as moral forces. Both instinctively know to do the right things, even at great cost to themselves. In novels about moral choices, both Grisham and Mark Twain locate the strongest morality in the least socially respectable (and respectful) characters. Among literary adolescents, at eleven Mark is nearly the youngest; Huck is about thirteen.

Two other characters who are older teens and products of upper class environments yet who are presented as moral forces are J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the...