The Underground Railroad

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Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad (Hardcover, 2016, Doubleday)

Hardcover, 306 pages

English language

Published Aug. 1, 2016 by Doubleday.

OCLC Number:
933420484
Goodreads:
30555488

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5 stars (1 review)

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s 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, …

4 editions

Subjects

  • Fiction
  • Historical fiction
  • American fiction
  • Slavery