Chamberlin Free Public Library Catalog

The underground railroad : a novel /

Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

The underground railroad : a novel / - First edition. - 306 pages ; 25 cm

Ajarry -- Georgia -- Ridgeway -- South Carolina -- Stevens -- North Carolina -- Ethel -- Tennessee -- Caesar -- Indiana -- Mabel -- The North.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey -- hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day.

9780385542364 (hardcover) 0385542364 (hardcover)

2016000643


Underground railroad--Fiction.
Fugitive slaves--United States--Fiction.
Fugitives from justice--Fiction.
African Americans--Social conditions--History--Fiction.


United States--History--19th century--Fiction.
United States--Race relations--Fiction.
Southern States--19th century--Fiction.


Historical fiction.
Fiction.
History.

PS3573.H4768 / U53 2016

813/.54