Metaphorical railroad, very real people

Eliza was real.

 There really was a woman who crossed the icy Ohio River to save herself and her child from lives in slavery.  Her story, as retold through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, made her one of the great heroines of American literature, not to mention stage and screen.  It and many other stories are woven together movingly in Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America by Fergus Bordewich. It’s a 2005 book that the library has in both print and audio editions. It makes good reading or listening for anyone interested in the slow but dramatic progress of human rights in a nation that proclaimed it was founded on liberty for all.

– Evan ap Arthur