This novel, The Underground Railroad, is touched with greatness. It is also touched with okayness. It is an uneven book, with marvelous passages and un-marvelous ones. There are home runs and whiffs.

The Underground Railroad, a vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person. Rather, it consisted of many ...

In all 30,000 slaves fled to Canada, many with the help of the underground railroad - a secret network of free blacks and white sympathizers who helped runaways. Harriet Tubman helped hundreds of ...

Only a small number of slaves traveled by the organized network of routes, "conductors" and "stations" that came to be known as the Underground Railroad. African American men and women of all ages ...