Finished: The Underground Railroad (Whitehead) Heart-rending Pulitzer Prize winning novel about a Georgia slave girl named Cora in the 1800's who uses a literal underground railroad to escape her deplorable plantation life. Cora is left on the Randall plantation by her own runaway mother, Mabel, when she is just ten years old, and considered to be a "stray". She makes her way on the plantation and is known for her toughness, but when she's 15 or 16, she stands up for a young slave boy and takes quite a whipping. Being a young woman now, she is also raped by two men. When a young slave man, Caesar, tells her of his plan to escape north, at first Cora refuses...but after these incidences, she sees that things are only going to get much worse as the slave owner's most cruel son has just been put in charge of her portion of the plantation. She agrees to run with Caesar, and is utterly amazed to find that the underground railroad is not a system of safe houses and people willing to help. It is actually a tunneled out, underground, functioning railroad with stations hidden underneath the houses of anti-slavery sympathizers. Thus begins Cora's journey. Cora meets some amazing people along the way who are willing to risk their lives to hide her and protect her. She and Caesar make it to their first stop and it's in South Carolina. They are still not free, but allowed to live in their own area and put to work in rich white people's homes or the factory. They are lulled into a false sense of security and skip taking the next few trains to continue north. Little do they know, the black people of the town are also being medically experimented on and part of a planned sterilization project that will keep their race from procreating. By the time they figure this out, and Cora realizes that they are still being controlled and imprisoned, just in a different way, the twisted slave-catcher, Ridgeway, who has been sent to haul them back to the Randall plantation has entered into their South Carolina town. Ridgeway is doubly motivated. He was the slave-catcher the few years back when Cora's mother, Mabel, ran away and escaped uncaught. The Randall's had never let him forget his failure to bring her back, and Ridgeway is determined not to be humiliated by Mabel's daughter as well. When Ridgeway makes his presence known in town, Sam, the kindly station master is able to get to Cora and send her to the tunnel, but he's too late to get to Caesar and he his mercilessly killed. The book is written so deeply, and the characters so real, that it makes your heart break reading about what they must endure...and makes your blood boil to experience the ignorance of the white people who are claiming they are the superior race. I always feel deeply when I read books about slavery, or about the persecution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and this book made me feel so deeply. Just when you've read a chapter about Cora or Caesar, the author throws you for a loop by having a chapter solely dedicated to Ridgeway the slave-catcher, or Ethel the reluctant underground helper, who is only helping because her husband insists, or, sadly, a chapter on Mabel, who while she did runaway, didn't get far before she turned back around to head back to the plantation for her girl...to let her know how far she DID get and what freedom there was out there for both of them under the sky, before she was bitten by a water moccasin and fell dying into the swamp, never to be heard from again. Cora, devastated that Caesar never makes it to the tunnel, takes the next train that comes along, even though the train operator tells her that things are bad and he's not supposed to pick anyone else up. He does so, but he leaves her in North Carolina. A  reluctant station master there, Martin, tells Cora that they are all in danger because North Carolina has just declared itself a white only state. All blacks are being kicked out, most just hung from trees along what is known at the "freedom trail", the road out of town. It's a horrific sight for Cora as she hides in the back of the wagon, and Martin takes her home to his wary wife Ethel where they hide Cora in a little alcove above the attic. Cora stays there for months, in yet another prison, with only a peephole out onto the white people's park, where rallies are held every Friday to string up a random black person who is caught. Cora learns to read a bit there,  with the help of Martin, and develops a love for almanacs, the only books Martin has up in the attic. Eventually, though, Ridgeway makes his way there and finds Cora. Sadly, Martin and Ethel are hung as Cora is dragged out of town in chains. Before taking Cora back to be tortured and killed by Randall, Ridgeway has another runaway slave to pick up in Tennessee, so they head there. In one Tennessee town, Cora is noticed by another black man named Royal who, along with two other men, meets Ridgeway and his two helpers on the road, battles with them, and rescues Cora. Unfortunately, they only chain Ridgeway up and don't flat out kill him! Royal is actually a free and educated black man from the north who has made his way down to help as many of his people as he can.  He takes Cora to a farm in Indiana owned by the Valentine family...a family of mixed black and white blood. Mr. Valentine is all about rescuing and bringing anyone onto the farm to live as long as they pitch in and help. When the farm actually becomes prosperous and starts to become it's own little town with even a few buildings erected, the white people who live in nearby towns get very nervous to have such a large black contingency so close. So, once again, they are raided by evil white people during one of their evening get togethers. Royal and Cora had just become lovers after months of courtship when Royal is gunned down during the melee. His last words to Cora are for her to make her way to the cabin he showed her and take the tunnel under it and go north. But, of course, Ridgeway is sitting right there and hears his words. He grabs Cora and forces her to take him to the cabin to see the actual underground railroad, which he has always suspected to be a real thing, before taking her back to Georgia. Once there, as they are making their way down the steep ladder, Cora throws her arms around Ridgeway, and the weight of the movement makes them fall down and down into the tunnel, leaving Ridgeway severely injured. Cora is injured as well, but not severely. She takes the hand cart, the only thing available in the tunnel, and starts pumping her way down the track. She doesn't even know if she's going to find an exit or a dead end, but she keeps going. Eventually she gets to a cave opening and comes out to the fresh air. A group of three wagons passes, and in the third wagon, an old black man with a brand on his neck is driving. Cora can tell he's a runaway. He stops to offer her food and a ride, and she hops up. He tells her they are going out west to Missouri and then California, and that's where the book ends. It's just a mesmerizing journey that I can't really do justice to in this little recap...definitely a book worth it's reputation. So many descriptive, deep, and poignant passages...and hovering over it all, that horrific, inescapable, most shameful part of our American history, slavery.