Life is hell for all the slaves, especially for Cora slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia and an outcast even among her fellow Africans. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. The Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor when engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Matters do not go as planned as they are being hunted after Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels forced them to flee again on seeking true freedom. Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey as the author brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era. The Underground Railroad is 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 share.