The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 

The life of Cora, a runaway slave living in Georgia– who rails against the man who has become her ‘owner’ in the 1840s.  Her mother ran away and left her behind as a child (near the end of the book we learn that she was on her way back to get her child but was bitten by a cotton-mouth and died in the swamp).  This is a bitter memory for Cora, who took over her mother’s little plot of ground as a garden.  When a new slave, a big man, took over her cabin and ruined her garden to build a house for his dog, Cora busted-up the doghouse and hurt the dog and its owner.  This got her branded as crazy by the other slaves.  But a new man secretly plots with her to run away.  When they leave, they find their way to the underground railroad.  On the way slave hunters try to capture them.  Cora kills one, fighting for her life.  On the railroad, they get a choice to stop in South Carolina or go on.  This is a different kind of life where negros are educated and given health care.  Only it turns out to be insidious.  Because the doctors are studying eugenics and want to operate on the women, so they won’t have children.  One day, slave hunters come to town looking for Cora and her man.  Cora escapes back to the underground railway station.  Her man never arrives.  She catches the next train, run by a boy who was told the stations were closed.  He drops her off at the end of the line, it is blocked by a cave-in after that.  The station master does not expect her and things have gotten bad in his town.  He takes her home and hides her in the attic.  No one in the town is allowed to have slaves.  But this is not a town of tolerance.  On the way to the town, she saw a seemingly endless row of trees with former slaves hanging from the branches.  She lives in the attic for months.  Each week she watches as a runaway slave is brought to the town square, denounced, and sometimes the white family that harbored the slave is also put on a platform, ridiculed and then all hanged.  Cora has no escape.  One night the town constabulary knocks on the door and drags Cora, the station master and his wife out.  But Cora is not hanged.  The slave hunters came to town looking for her.  They have a commission in Tennessee to return a slave.  On the way, the hunter gets tired of hearing that slave sing, off-key, and kills him.  They switch direction toward Georgia to return Cora and are hijacked.  Cora is freed and runs with two new black men who tell her they are not slaves.  They take her to a farm in Indiana where the owner is black and quite a few runaway slaves.  Life on the farm is good.  Cora discovers the owner has a library and spends a good amount of her time there when she isn’t helping on the farm.  But life is not idyllic.  There are people on the farm who resent the runaways from sharing in what they have built.  One man contacts the slave hunters, thinking they will come and remove the runaways peacefully.  It results in a massacre.  Cora is captured, but the slave hunter wants to see where the underground station is so he can report it and have it destroyed.  But on the way down the ladder, he insists on holding on to Cora.  She falls, pulling him with her.  She lands on top and he dies.  She uses a handcart and pumps her way to another station.  Where she comes out seems to be in the middle of nowhere.  A small wagon train passes here and the last wagon is driven by an old black man who offers her a ride to the west.