The Underground Railroad Review: Oprah's Newest Book Club Pick Is 'Tense, Graphic, Uplifting and Informed

Slavery in America: It's a horrific, mesmerizing subject that haunts and inspires our imagination. It won't let go. And brilliant artists help us re-imagine it, over and over again. Think Toni Morrison (Beloved), Alex Haley (Roots); think 12 Years a Slave. Now here comes Colson Whitehead (bestselling author of Zone One and Sag Harbor) and with an extraordinary new take:
What if the Underground Railroad physically existed – as a vast labyrinth of secret tunnels that ran north right under the noses of slave-owners and slave-catchers?

That's the conceit of The Underground Railroad, an electrifying novel just announced as Oprah's newest Book Club pick. At its center is Cora, the toughest, most charismatic young heroine you could ever meet. She's born on a Georgia plantation and abandoned at 10 years old by her mother, who escapes, never to be recaptured.


Brutalized one too many times, Cora herself escapes onto a train and into a world of new danger. She flees, hides, finds refuge, and flees again through South and North Carolina and into Indiana, helped by assorted brave souls and stalked at every turn by Ridgeway, a relentless slave-catcher fueled by bloodlust and greed.




Oprah, in revealing her Book Club pick, said The Underground Railroad "kept me up at night, had my heart in my throat, afraid to turn the next page."