A thoughtful and illuminating bicycle journey along the Underground Railroad by a climate scientist seeking to engage with American history.
The traces of the Underground Railroad hide in plain sight: a great church in Philadelphia; a humble old house backing up to the New Jersey Turnpike; an industrial outbuilding in Ohio. Over the course of four years, David Goodrich rode his bicycle 3,000 miles east of the Mississippi to travel the routes of the Underground Railroad and delve into the history and stories in the places where they happened.
He followed the most famous of conductors, Harriet Tubman, from where she was enslaved in Maryland, on the eastern shore, all the way to her family sanctuary at a tiny chapel in Ontario, Canada. Travelling South, he rode from New Orleans, where the enslaved were bought and sold, through Mississippi and the heart of the Delta Blues. As we pedal along with him, Goodrich brings us to the Borderland along the Ohio River, a kind...