The Underground Railroad Book Review

(Pulitzer Prize Winner)

(National Book Award Winner)

(Oprah’s Book Club)

By Colson Whitehead

Doubleday

One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years

I got this book because I remembered reading about Harriet Tubman, and the story of the underground railroad back in the late 70’s and was completely engrossed.  Because I spend quite a lot of time on the train heading in and out of Boston, I get audio books.  It's my new way to lose myself in another time, or land without weighing my bag down any further.

The book is narrated by Bahni Turpin who does an amazing job bringing you back to a cotton plantation in Georgia, and bringing Cora to life. This story is about slavery, wanton cruelty, and perseverance.  A book that clarifies the horrors of an era so powerfully and raw, a violent truth in our history that, has been hidden and that all of us need to understand, learn and never, ever forget.

I think the audio version sometimes brings you closer to the feeling the writer wants you to have.  I spent many hours with tears in my eyes and my stomach in knots, while reading through the perils that Cora went through to get herself to freedom through the underground railroad. Sometimes I had to pull the headphones off my ears, because emotionally, I just couldn’t take the horror and violence bestowed on so many different people, for reasons I still cannot fathom.  However, I would soon put them back on again, to finish the journey.

This book is full of the realization of the slavery business, and yet shows you the hope of those who continued to pursue their freedom.  It brings you directly into the lives of those who lived through it, those who helped get rid of it, and those that lavished in the atrocity of it.  This is one of the best books I have read because it made me deeply understand the horrors of slavery, the heinousness, deplorable conditions, and cruelty of man. We must make sure that it never happens again.  It is a further reference for all to learn that racism has no place in our society.