The Underground Railroad by Whitehead, Colson - 2017

US: LITTLE, BROWN BOOK GROUP, 2017. Paperback. Like New. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a he llish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even am ong her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virgi nia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decis ion to escape to the North.In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the ante bellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilap idated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, pick ing up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Car olina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is cl ose on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing fligh t, state by state, seeking true freedom.At each stop on her journey, Cora e ncounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at on ce the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.