The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage, and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all shareĪccess-restricted-item true Addeddate 08:06:10 Boxid IA40337514 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Like Gulliver, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey - Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in states in the pre-Civil War era. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing journey, state-by-state, seeking true freedom. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens - and Ridgeway, the relentless slave-catcher sent to find her, arrives in town. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, where both find work in a city that at first seems like a haven. In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is not a metaphor - a secret network of tracks and tunnels has been built beneath the Southern soil. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her - but they manage to find a station and head north. Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, and they plot their escape. Life is hellish for all the slaves, but Cora is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is coming into womanhood even greater pain awaits. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia.

The overground railroad