The ever-increasing horrors of slavery embolden Cora to flee the Georgia cotton plantation on which she grew up. She is spirited away on the underground railroad. In Whitehead’s novel the underground railroad is more than a metaphor for an escape route to freedom, it is an actual subterranean conveyance that transports runaways away from enslavement to an alternative life further north. The tunnels travel through both space and time, and we find Cora living in different versions of the African American experience post-slavery. I was motivated to learn more about the different “stations” where Cora disembarked – the settings that may have represented various realities for African Americans after emancipation. Unfortunately, in the end I found it to be a bit of a slog and I wished for more character development. I found myself forgetting where some of the characters had been introduced and all of them seemed a bit one-dimensional. A worthwhile read, but fell short of its po