Cora Is A Slave On A Cotton Plantation In Georgia. Life Is Hellish For All The Slaves, But Cora Is An Outcast Even Among Her Fellow Africans, And She Is Coming Into Womanhood; Even Greater Pain Awaits. Caesar, A Recent Arrival From Virginia, Tells Her About The Underground Railroad, And They Plot Their Escape. Matters Do Not Go As Planned - Cora Kills A Young White Boy Who Tries To Capture Her - But They Manage To Find A Station And Head North. In Whitehead's Ingenious Conception, The Underground Railroad Is Not A Metaphor - A Secret Network Of Tracks And Tunnels Has Been Built Beneath The Southern Soil. Cora And Caesar's First Stop Is South Carolina, Where Both Find Work In A City That At First Seems Like A Haven. But The City's Placid Surface Masks An Insidious Scheme Designed For Its Black Denizens - And Ridgeway, The Relentless Slave-catcher Sent To Find Her, Arrives In Town. Forced To Flee Again, Cora Embarks On A Harrowing Journey, State-by-state, Seeking True Freedom. Like Gulliver, Cora Encounters Different Worlds At Each Stage Of Her Journey - Whitehead Brilliantly Recreates The Unique Terrors For Black People In States In The Pre-civil War Era. The Underground Railroad Is At Once 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. Colson Whitehead.