Underground Airlines by Ben H. WintersMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I picked up Underground Airlines on a friend's recommendation after he saw that I'd read The Color of Law. Both deal with racial issues in America, though otherwise the books couldn't be more different: fiction vs non-fiction, thriller novel vs historical research.
Underground Airlines takes place in an alternate reality where the Civil War was prevented, just barely, by a compromise that left slavery in place as an institution in the South. Over time, it shrunk to only four states, but also modernized and scaled up like any other industry. Giant plantations with thousands of "Persons Bound to Labor" feed demand for cheap cotton and other goods.
There's plenty of action and suspense in Underground Airlines, as our protagonist searches for an escaped slave and eventually makes his way into the lion's mouth of a slave plantation. But I found the development of his character and revelations about his history to be just as interesting as the action. He assumes identities as needed in the work, never showing the deeply scarred mind underneath...except to the reader, of course. We never even learn his real name, only that he barely remembers hearing it from his mother before being taken from her.
I was struck by how many of the differences in this alternate world seemed to be of degree rather than kind. For instance, in one scene a white woman and black man are checking into a small hotel, and the (white) clerk asks her if she is all right, obviously assuming that she's being forced. Or when a free black man in a free state is harassed by police. Or how neighborhoods are described as white or colored. We've made progress in racial integration and equality in our world, but we still struggle with those kinds of issues.
Underground Airlines is a great read just for the mystery and action, but it's even better due to the alternate reality setting. Every reader is likely to find something to make them consider our own world in a different light.
