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In the Upper Country
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Wesley French, Milton Barnes, Tymika Tafari
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
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In the Upper Country
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Publisher's Summary
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General's Award for Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2023 Amazon Canada First Novel Award
Longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Historical Fiction Award
The fates of two unforgettable women—one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life's last vital act—intertwine in this sweeping, deeply researched debut set in the Black communities of Ontario that were the last stop on the Underground Railroad.
Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by refugees from the slave-owning states of the American south—whose agents do not always stay on their side of the border.
One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned.
But Cash doesn't want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States; of Indigenous peoples from a wide swath of what is called North America and of the Black men and women brought here into slavery and their free descendents on both sides of the border.
As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed not only about the complicated tapestry of her nation, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny.
Sweeping along the path of the Underground Railroad from the southern States to Canada, through the lands of Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black communities of southern Ontario, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
What the critics say
*WINNER OF THE 2023 WRITERS' TRUST ATWOOD GIBSON PRIZE*
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION
One of
Book Riot’s “10 New Historical Fiction Books Hitting the Shelves”
USA Today’s “20 winter books we can’t wait to read”
Cosmopolitan's "10 Best Historical Fiction Books of 2023"
Lit Hub’s “20 new books to read right now”
One of CBC Books "Best Fiction of 2023”
“Fresh and propulsive. . . . Thomas uses evocative detail and immersive description to explore slavery in Canada, a country that has been mythologized as an escape from the institution. . . . He also deftly makes clear the interconnectedness and rippling traumas it caused from Africa to the Caribbean to the Americas. . . . [In the Upper Country] is a testament to the power of story and a veneration of those whose tales are often forgotten in mainstream media.”—New York Times Book Review
"In the Upper Country is not only fiction alive with history; it is historic. . . . In the Upper Country reminds me—yes—of Lawrence Hill’s Book of Negroes and Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying. And practically every page turns up a sentence or a phrase that could have been penned by Toni Morrison or James Baldwin. . . . A gift of lyric genius to enthrall all—and to educate Afro-Métis people about the love and courage that enabled their creation."—George Elliott Clarke, author of Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir
"Canadian history has long oppressed and neglected the Black and Indigenous stories at the foundation of the society that now exists here. . . . Now, in the spirit of storytelling that has helped these cultures survive despite the horrors of history, a tremendous novel has emerged to fill that void. In the Upper Country enlightens and empowers in a way few other literary sagas can, by humanizing people who have long been historical footnotes and bringing their stories to the centre. Kai Thomas is a visionary, an advocate, and overall a groundbreaking storytelling voice who has now contributed a classic to this country’s canon. This novel will resonate for generations to come."—Waubgeshig Rice, bestselling author of Moon of the Crusted Snow