Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

First Line: "So," said the young priest. "I think that I'm the man you're looking for."

The world as we know it is much the same in Underground Airlines: smartphones, Happy Meals, social networking. But it also has the Hard Four, European Union sanctions, and... what on earth is a Clean Hands State? You see, in the world of the Underground Airlines, the Civil War never happened, and slavery continues in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Carolina (the Hard Four). Due to these sanctions the country's economy is crippled-- except in the Hard Four with its free labor. 

Are there runaway slaves? You'd better believe it, and there are bounty hunters working for the U.S. Marshall Service to find them and take them back to their owners. Victor is a black man who keeps very busy as a bounty hunter, and his boss is determined that Victor find the leaders of the abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines. Victor is a good man doing bad work, and as he strives to find the roots of the Underground Airlines, he's learning secrets that could very easily get him killed.

I am a fan of well-written alternative history; I suppose "What if?" has always been one of my favorite questions to ask. I have read books in which the South won the American Civil War and found those good food for thought, but this is the first time I've read one in which that war never occurred at all. Underground Airlines is thought-provoking, sometimes powerful, and often very uncomfortable reading. Uncomfortable because we are not as far removed from slavery as we'd like to think. The world Ben H. Winters has created is altogether too plausible.

But the entire story does hinge on one thing: the main character of Victor, and Victor was not a success for me.  When I first met him, I thought he was a fabulous character, and I felt sympathy for the plight of his wife. Then I learned what he really did for a living. A black man who was born a slave, won his freedom, and is now hunting people down to bring them back to slavery? It took a while for the disappointment to subside, which it did do. Winters takes us into Victor's mind, and as I learned more about him, I felt that this man was a volcano almost ready to explode. 

I was primed, and I was ready for this book to take me to great places... but after the first hundred pages, it lost momentum for me. Victor lost that volcanic feeling. There were inconsistencies in the world Winters created that didn't quite make sense. There wasn't enough shown to me about life in the Hard Four. What could've been a great novel became a good one. An intriguing one.  But not quite on par with Octavia Butler's Kindred. 

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

ISBN: 9780316261241

Mulholland Books © 2016

Hardcover, 336 pages

Fiction, Standalone

Rating: B

Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.

 

REVIEW: Gold Rush Dogs

Title: Gold Rush Dogs
Author(s): Claire Rudolf Murphy and Jane G. Haigh
ISBN: 0882405349/ Alaska Northwest Books, 2004
History
Rating: B-

First Line: Legions of treasure seekers during the Alaska-Yukon gold rush era depended on the loyalty and hard work of their dogs.

Murphy and Haigh set out to tell us about the most famous dogs during the gold rush era, and they do an admirable job. This book is filled with photographs of the day: the dogs, their owners, and the places where they lived and worked. Those pictures do a lot to place the reader right in the thick of things.

Of the nine dogs written about in this book, I was familiar with three, having already read a book about the sled dogs responsible for getting vaccine to Nome, Alaska, in the winter of 1925. Dogs did more than pull sleds however. One accompanied naturalist John Muir in his treks over glaciers. Another met all incoming ships at the piers in Juneau. My favorite was Nero, the companion of the richest woman in the Klondike, Belinda Mulrooney. Mulrooney would load Nero with heavy sacks of gold dust to take on an 18-mile walk to the bank. On one such journey, Nero slipped while crossing a deep stream. The weight of the gold dust kept him from saving himself. I'd tell you what happened next, but why ruin the best chapter in a very good book?

This is a marvelous book for any dog lover. It is filled to the brim with interesting stories, history and photos. There is much to be learned in its pages. The only quibble I have with Gold Rush Dogs is its layout. Interspersed amongst the stories of the dogs are other snippets of history. Although related to the information of the chapter they're in, more than once these side stories interrupt the flow of the story of the dog. I found it more than a bit irritating and thought that there should have been a better way of including these extras. That one complaint aside, I enjoyed this book and found it to be a fitting companion to a previous book by the authors: Gold Rush Women.

REVIEW: Blonde Roots

Title: Blonde Roots
Author: Bernadine Evaristo
ISBN: 9781594488634/ Riverhead Books, 2009
Fiction
Rating: D

First Line: So while my boss, Bwana, and his family are out clinking rum-and-Coke glasses and shaking their wobbly backsides at fancy parties down the road, I've been assigned duties in his office to sort through his ledgers.

Evaristo poses the question "What if Africans had enslaved Europeans?" Her imagined world is seen through the eyes of Doris, an English slave taken from her home as a young child and put to work on the plantation of her owner, Bwana, a leading figure in the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa.

I had high hopes for this book that were only partially realized. The very first thing that upset my applecart was the map in the front of the book. It shows "Aphrika" where Europe should be, with the Ambossan Channel separating it from the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa. Europe, or "Europa" is where Africa should be, with England wedged in just north of the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Denmark. I am a proponent of Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief". I start out reading each book with the understanding that I'm going to believe anything the author tells me, and it normally takes something huge to knock me off that chair. Evaristo's map knocked me off the chair because I know how this planet works. If Aphrika is where Europe should be on this planet, it's not going to have African weather. If Europa is where Africa should be, it's going to have African weather, not European. That's just the way this planet works. My head had a very difficult time wrapping around that idea, so I started reading with one eyebrow raised.

Clothing styles, weapons, modes of transport, tools...are all mixed up in this world, so if you're a reader who likes to have some sort of idea of what century it is while you're reading, you're going to be confused. Evaristo's story idea is an excellent one, but it's based upon a world that millions of us are somewhat familiar with so muddling geography and time periods is unnecessarily confusing.

Several times I almost stopped reading Blonde Roots. Evaristo's place names--"Londolo" and "Do Va" are two examples--are probably meant to be clever and/or evocative. I found them annoying. The book's strongest parts were when Doris got away from the city and just lived her life. Then the story flowed and totally engaged my interest, but it wasn't enough to keep me afloat in the author's imagined world. I think I might have had a much different reaction if I hadn't read so much about this period of history, so any other reader's mileage could certainly vary!

Edit: Read Bethany's review on her blog, B&b ex libris.