The Underground Railroad: A Novel

by Colson Whitehead,
The Florida Courier, August 26, 2016

As Colson Whitehead’s searing new novel opens, Cora, a teenage slave, “who had seen men hung from trees and left for buzzards and crows,” and her mother abscond without saying goodbye or contacting her when she was free, is beaten by the owner of the cotton plantation – and decides to escape to the north on the underground railroad.