“The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead

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Colson Whitehead’s brilliant new novel The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora, a young slave girl and her escape from a plantation in Georgia.

After becoming the primary target of Ridgeway, the slave catcher with a brutal reputation, Cora’s escape takes her to several new lands, each with its own unique identity and make-up.

From South Carolina, which first feels like a haven but is far from it, to Indiana, Cora travels north, journeying with a cast of characters whose presence always feels significant but is always fleeting. For Cora, to form a relationship is a luxury, and Whitehead expertly depicts her condition:

Cora didn’t know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.

Whitehead re-imagines the underground railroad literally with a network of engineers that run the train system underground.

If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.

The Underground Railroad has garnered incredible praise as a #1New York Times Bestseller, Time Magazine’s Book of the Year, Amazon’s Book of the year, a winner of the National Book Award for Fiction and a finalist for both the Kirkus Prize as well as the Carnegie Medal.

Whitehead’s other novels include The Intuitionist, Zone One, Sag Harbor, Apex Hides the Hurt and John Henry Days.

Recommended? Unequivocally.

Buy it here: http://amzn.to/2kOfztv