One of the great attractions of Les Misérables is its array of thrilling escape scenes, most of which feature the outlaw hero, Jean Valjean. In a database of 2000 texts from nineteenth-century U.S. periodicals that focus on Hugo’s novel, half of the references to Valjean invoke his escape wizardry as a way of framing local events. From New York to Kansas City to Fort Worth, St. Paul, and New Orléans, Hugo’s character inspired not just prison breaks but also penitential lives in a clear illustration of what Michel Espagne terms ‘cultural transfers’ [’les transferts culturels’]. In this paper, Grossman looks at these American stories in relation to Hugo’s text from the viewpoint of both reception and adaptation studies, the better to understand how Les Misérables was read early on in the States — and in how it was reworked in the public mind in accordance with the American national mythology.