Colson Whitehead’s historical-fiction novel The Underground Railroad was published in 2016, and rare praise wasn’t far behind it!

The book won a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and a host of other prestigious commendations. It’s the story of Cora, a young woman who flees slavery on a Georgia plantation via the storied grassroots escape network which lends this novel its name.

But Whitehead’s Underground Railroad is not the familiar clandestine alliance of brave abolitionists and allies who stood ready to convey their impossibly courageous enslaved counterparts to freedom once they escape.

No, in this telling, it’s something else, entirely.

Join my daughter, Sally Shideler, and me as we explore The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016, Doubleday).