The Underground Railroad

Ajarry is purchased and sold across the Atlantic and across the American South. Her granddaughter Cora inherits a small garden plot and the status of 'stray' on the Randall plantation. Caesar proposes escape. Cora refuses, then agrees after she kills a white boy who attacks her during the flight.

A chapter told from the perspective of slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway — his father, his ideology, the 'American imperative,' and his obsession with Cora after failing to catch her mother Mabel.

Cora and Caesar arrive in South Carolina and find housing, work, and education in what appears to be a progressive Black community. But the state hospital is sterilizing Black women without consent, and Cora discovers that the museum where she works displays enslaved people as living exhibits. Caesar is captured and killed. Cora flees.

North Carolina has expelled and executed every Black resident. Cora hides in an attic for months, watching Friday Night Festivals — public lynchings — through a crack in the boards. Her host Martin is terrified. She is eventually discovered, captured by Ridgeway.

Caesar's backstory — his upbringing in Virginia, his brief period of near-freedom, his re-enslavement through the betrayal of a white benefactor's heir, and what the Railroad meant to him.

Ridgeway transports Cora through a Tennessee ravaged by fire and plague. A Tennessee chapter alternates with Ethel's backstory — her missionary dreams, her complicity, her late-stage awakening to the reality of what she has participated in.

Valentine Farm — a thriving Black community in Indiana built by a free Black farmer. Cora finds love with Royal, a Railroad agent. The community debates whether to stay public or go underground. A raid destroys the farm, Royal is killed, and Ridgeway captures Cora again — but she kills him and escapes.

Mabel's chapter — Cora's mother — reveals she never reached freedom. She turned back for Cora, was bitten by a snake, and died in the swamp. Cora emerges from the tunnel into the open air and joins a wagon train moving west.