Underground Airlines Review

This week's novel is Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.

In this alternate history, the Civil War never happened and slavery is still legal in four states.  "Victor" works for the US Marshall Service, tracking down runaway slaves who have fled North, finding them before they reach Canada.  His latest case, which takes him to Indianapolis, is a weird one, with pieces missing from the file and mysteries that keep piling up.  Victor infiltrates the Underground Airlines, begrudgingly makes friends with a white woman and her biracial son staying at his hotel, and suppresses his memories of his early life as a slave.

The outstanding part of this novel is the world building.  The repercussions are well thought out, extending into international politics, the economy, and technology, which then extends into how those affect normal people's every day life.  Most of Europe and Japan want nothing to do with a country that upholds slavery, and as a result, everyone has cars from South Africa or Pakistan.  You can feel how the country is struggling in a hundred little ways.  The social repercussions are also well thought out.  If parts of the South haven't moved past slavery, then parts of the North haven't moved past institutionalized segregation.

The only time I was knocked out of the story was when it explained the Texas War, a messy, unpopular civil war when Texas decided to secede on moral grounds, at which point President Johnson said some rude things about Mexicans.  I have a lot to say about this, but it mostly boils down to, "that's not how we do things in Texas."  And although I buy that in this alternate history, LBJ--along with everyone else--would be more racist, as a graduate of LBJ High School, my gut instinct is to go, "But he pushed for Civil Rights!"  It's good world building, but I don't like it.  They needed something analogous to the Vietnam War, and since the US was not a super power and had no moral ground to go after communists and no power to back up an invasion, the Vietnam War didn't happen.  That's good world building too.

There's a great deal of depth about court cases and slavery and discrimination acts, and I couldn't tell where the history ended and the alternate history began, making me feel like a bad ally for not knowing.  What made me feel even more like a bad ally was when I couldn't tell where the reality of discrimination ended and the alternate reality began.  Surely it's not this bad...but of course it is.  Surprisingly, in a novel about slavery, this was the most effective way to make me check my privilege.

***

Next Week: Every Day, YA meets Quantum Leap with a toxic romantic relationship by David Levithan