THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by COLSON WHITEHEAD (2016)

Often a novel which has been heavily promoted and has become a best seller, and even an award winner, turns out to be a disappointment to me, not nearly as good as I had expected. That is NOT the case with The Underground Railroad. It is not only a marvelously well written and spellbinding book but also an important book, in the sense that To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby are important books. These have something to give us beyond the masterful writing and suspenseful plots and sympathetic characters. They help us better understand our world.

As the story begins, Cora is a field slave on a Georgia cotton plantation which has a sadistic owner and a brutal overseer. When one of the male slaves proposes that she accompany him in escaping, she initially refuses but changes her mind when she is severely beaten for an infraction, sexually groped by her owner, and then sees another slave beaten, castrated, doused with oil and roasted. Their method of escape, he tells her, will be the Underground Railroad, what the reader automatically believes will be that historical network of abolitionists and safe houses leading to the North and freedom. But in a surprising turn of events, this underground railroad is an actual subterranean tunnel with tracks and a locomotive.

Reading this first part, I thought to myself, "There's nothing new here; the situation even sounds almost unbelievably exaggerated. And what's the point of this underground railroad gimmick?" Then, as the story progresses, Cora sees skyscrapers at their first destination, and I suddenly realize that this is not an account of a literal journey but of a metaphorical journey from slavery to full freedom, which is still ongoing. Each stop along the way presents a different response to the problem of freedom and racial relations. The situations are exaggerated, as was the opening, but the reader can see in each one familiar aspects of the racially troubled American experience, not just of then but of now.

I have an almost irresistible impulse to discuss each step of Cora's journey in detail, with my interpretation, but that would be unfair to a potential reader, particularly because Whitehead has written this in such a subtle way that it allows each reader to take away differing aspects. Just please read it for yourself.


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The Underground Railroad won this year's National Book Award and is included on 42 "Best of 2016" lists. I highly anticipate that it will be a strong contender for the 2017 Pulitzer. It is that good.