The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

 

In this Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, Colson Whitehead has written a story that makes the reader feel the horrors of slavery.  Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia.  The owner is cruel and when he dies and his even crueler brother takes over, Cora agrees to run away with another slave.  He has a connection with the underground railroad and they are soon out of Georgia.

Their first stop is South Carolina where they decide to stay as it seems as if former slaves are treated well there.  They are given jobs and dorms in which to live.  There is plenty of food.  But it turns out that there is an ulterior motive behind the kindness and Cora moves on.  Her next stop is North Carolina where there is no expectation of kindness.  Public lynchings are town entertainment and she spends months hidden in the attic of a former underground railroad participant.  But the slave hunters come to search and Cora is captured and on her way back to the plantation where she expects a hideous, torture-filled death.

But fate intervenes and Cora is once more on the road.  She ends up in Indiana where there is a large farm that offers shelter to runaway slaves as long as they can contribute.  She settles into a life there where slavery is not legal and even finds love.  But dreams don't always come true.

Colson Whitehead has become the voice of the racial sins experienced by African Americans.  This book was the winner of numerous awards and another of his novels, The Nickel Boys, also won the Pulitzer.  He uses an actual railroad in this book, a figurative device that shows just as the train was destined to overtake horse-drawn vehicles, slavery was destined to eventually be stamped out.  Unfortunately, prejudice cannot be outlawed and it remains with us even today.  This book is recommended to readers of literary, historical and diverse voices fiction.