Underground Airlines is a powerful, well-written book doing what the best of its genre does: using the strange universe it creates to shed light on the truth of our own. In this case, Ben Winters does a fantastic job building a world in which the Civil War never happened due to the assassination of Lincoln as president-elect and in which slavery still exists in America in 2016 in a way that highlights how the legacy of slavery still shapes and creates racial injustice and promotes structural racism in the United States as it really is. He draws sharp and pointed parallels between institutions in the America of the Hard Four and mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex, a criminal justice system that too often criminalizes black bodies and the residential segregation of our cities. In doing so, he lays bare the moral compromises and consoling lies white people tell themselves to justify, ignore, soften or deny their personal complicity from a society that dehumanizes black people, and the toll that takes on those caught up in it and our society at large.
It’s also a solid, fast-paced detective story which is in addition to bringing in its themes in a way that seems organic also manages to be surprising, well-founded and tie up almost all its loose ends in a neat bow.
All that being said, I thought the ending worked better on a character level than on a world or plot level – it closes out the arcs of our central character Brother and his ally Martha well, but without letting you see the ripple effects of the story on their universe, and there are some noticeable holes in the later stages of the process of getting there. It’s also just hard to forget reading this book that this is a novel centered on a black voice talking about living under white supremacy and often pointing out the damage done by white liberals in centering themselves in the narrative of fighting white supremacy written by a white author. Ben Winters did a good job with Underground Airlines, but it does seem fair to ask whether this book was really his to write in the first place.
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Human Nature - the Devil and the Angel
It is 2015. Starting the story is Jim Dirkson, 40-ish, mild-mannered, and manumitted by his late owner's will. He is in Indianapolis desperately trying to find an abolitionist to help him free his wife, Gentle. She is still a PBL (Person Bound to Labor) in a bauxite mine in Carolina.I write that Dirkson starts the story because we find out shortly that Dirkson is an alias. He is working undercover for the U.S. Marshals, and he aims to catch runaway slaves, not save any.It's an alternate history. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while still president-elect. In the horror following, Congress avoided a civil war by agreeing that 6 states could permanently keep slavery. The two Carolinas combine into one state for bigger clout. And in 1944, Truman offered Georgia defense contracts in exchange for abolishing slavery. So now there's 4 states with slavery. "The Hard Four" they are called.Imagine plantations with today's high-tech security abilities. Imagine slave catchers with today's tracking and forensic abilities. And imagine people as determined to undermine slavery as they did in 1860, willing to risk their lives and liberty to do so.I thought the re-imagining of America in "Underground Airlines" well thought-out and interesting. There is great writing, too. Here's, Dirkson, who is black, heading towards a slave state – the border is called "The Fence": "The Ramblers Roost was in Pulaski, Tennessee, fifty miles north of the Fence, but of course it got thicker the farther south you went, that coefficient of difficulty involved in doing even the simplest tasks. I think of it sometimes as a pressure in the atmosphere, like walking under water: the extra effort required to get served at a restaurant, make a purchase at a store. Check in to a motel."I first became acquainted with Ben H. Winters' writing, by reading his "The Last Policeman" trilogy,Last Policeman Trilogy (3 Book Series).I much enjoyed the trilogy for the same reason I enjoyed "Underground Airlines". In both, Winters does a very good job of showing how people react differently under stress. Better angels sometimes, and sometimes not.A recommended story, 4.6 stars rounded up to 5.Happy Reader
Top reviews from other countries
Mig Bardsley
A very good read. Difficult to categorise.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2017Sharon Harumi Lopez Koizumi
Une historie different et interesante
Reviewed in France on July 18, 2017
Michelle Birkette
A refreshing alternate history novel packed full of truth
Reviewed in Australia on May 14, 2019Prax
Good, original story on the cusp of greatness.
Reviewed in Canada on November 6, 2016