Bingo: Green
Every day is two worlds; every day we split into two.”
I often can’t remember when or why I picked up a book for my TBR. I’ve had Ben Winters’s Underground Airlines for quite a while, but I don’t know what led me to the book. A review? Browsing in the bookstore? However I came across it, I don’t think I realized how good it would be.
It is the 21st century and four states–the Hard Four–still allow slavery. This came about through a compromise, where some states in the south were allowed to continue slavery, while in other states it was entirely banned. By the time of this story, only four southern states remain as slaveholders. It is slavery in all its horrors, despite the euphemism used: Persons Bound to Labor (PBs).
The protagonist has a rotating series of names, as he is a slave tracker with the US Marshalls service. As a US Marshall, he tracks down escaped slaves and returns them to their slaveholder, which are often big conglomerates such as large farms and cotton plants. For the purposes of this review, I’ll call him Victor, which is his US Marshall name. Victor is Black and was once a slave himself. He and his brother planned their escape from the farm where they were held, although Victor is the only one who escaped. He finds himself up north when he is tracked down by the US Marshalls service and threatened into becoming a slave catcher; if he refuses the assignment, he will be sent back into slavery. They implant a locator inside his neck and for over five years he locates escaped slaves, after which the US Marshalls send them back south..
Victor’s split identity–as both tracker and former slave–is kept in good control at the beginning of the book. He does his job with cold calculation, not letting the morality of his position or the pain from his past intrude on his mission. He knows it is the devil’s work, as he says, but he will do anything to prevent being sent back south again. As the story goes on, the tension between what he is and what he was starts to break down his compartmentalization. He says at one point, “I was feeling again like I wasn’t made for all this. That’s what I was thinking. Born into the wrong life, somehow. Wrong body.” In a flashback to Victor and his brother Castle, Castle envisions a free future. He says, “We look like we’re here, with all this, but we’re really somewhere else. In the future we got somewhere else. Some other time.” This concept arises frequently, where Victor experiences his present self and then an imagined future, whether freeing or oppressive. Victor’s conflicting identities push more and more to the surface as he works his job to recover a slave named Jackdaw.
Victor’s pursuit of Jackdaw is soon upended by a Pastor Burton, who is part of the Underground Airlines, a network who ensures slaves on the run make it up north. Victor has presented himself as a man whose partner is still stuck down south, hoping to infiltrate the underground network to find Jackdaw. Burton initially spurns him, but eventually the network figures out Victor is a tracker and they blackmail him into helping their cause. Victor enters a world of double dealings and his own trip down south to track down proof of a scandal that could upend the entire system of slavery.
I call this a thriller, because as much as it is alternative historical fiction, it is also a tension-driven plot that has the reader wrapped up in all its twists and turns. It is not a hard sell to imagine a world where slavery still exists, and the terror of the institution is authentically conveyed. You understand Victor’s complicated motives when set against returning to a life of violence and servitude. The story’s stakes increase with every chapter; I tore through the book to get to the ending.
As much as I do believe writers can write about anything with the right sensitivity and research–even if it’s not their experience or identity–I confess I was shocked when three-quarters of the way through the book I flipped to the author picture on the back flap and saw a white author. I verified his background online. The book has an absolutely authentic, convincing voice, even though it’s in first person from a Black protagonist’s point of view. I’m sure, as a white person myself, I missed places where the narrative falters, but having read a lot of books where the author does NOT do a good job with conveying other backgrounds, this book felt like a rare exception.
The book digs down deep into race, identity, redemption, and an alternate future which these days is not hard to envision. The cruelty and horror of slavery is laid out in full, as well as the human beings that it affects. On top of that, it’s an urgent thriller that captivates.