THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD represents a “first” in the nearly decade-long career I have enjoyed as a contributor to Bookreporter. During that time, I have reviewed a variety of books: biographies, history, politics, sports, mysteries and legal fiction. But I have never been honored to review a book selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Oprah’s Book Club has existed for 20 years. She encourages her viewers to read more difficult books, and then come together and discuss them. A book selected by Oprah is immediately headed to the bestseller list.

Colson Whitehead is already an accomplished author whose works range from numerous novels to his nonfiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker, THE NOBLE HUSTLE. His fiction has achieved New York Times bestseller status and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for JOHN HENRY DAYS.

"THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is literature at its finest. It will make readers think, and scenes portrayed on its pages will remain with them long after they have finished the book. Simply put, it should be read by all."

Historically, the Underground Railroad had no actual trains or tracks. Instead it was a collection of slavery opponents who helped slaves escape to freedom in the years prior to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Here, Whitehead creates a mythical actual underground train that moves freedom seekers from location to location in a northward journey. The novel focuses on one of these passengers, Cora, a teenage slave without family who is running away from a brutal cotton plantation in Georgia around 1850. As she escapes towards freedom, those aiding her will sometimes meet a vicious and brutal death. Years before Cora made her decision to escape, she had been left behind on the plantation by her mother, Mabel. After Cora’s escape, she is being followed by a man known as Ridgeway, a bounty hunter who unsuccessfully pursued her mother. That failure haunts Ridgeway and drives him to locate Cora and destroy those abolitionists who might come to her aid.

Cora travels from Georgia to South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana. Along the way, the brutality and bigotry portrayed by Whitehead serve as a stark reminder to all of us that there is much injustice and shame in American history. We deny it at our own peril. Lynchings, torture, slave patrollers who could stop a person simply because of his or her skin color, and countless other indignities were commonplace. At one stop on her journey, Cora finds a community that accepts sterilization as a natural step in the pursuit of emancipation. There are too many slaves, and if there were only fewer, they could then be free. This fictional community recalls actual events in Tuskegee as well as forced sterilizations once approved by the United States Supreme Court.

A masterful work of fiction can make readers aware of uncomfortable facts that they otherwise might be unwilling to accept. Even in contemporary America, where black parents must teach their children how to respond to police officers who target them simply because of their race, and the First Lady of our nation faces criticism from some for pointing out that she raised her daughters in a house built by slaves, we should always keep in mind the words of one southerner, William Faulkner, that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is literature at its finest. It will make readers think, and scenes portrayed on its pages will remain with them long after they have finished the book. Simply put, it should be read by all.