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  • Underground Airlines

  • Written by: Ben Winters
  • Narrated by: William DeMeritt
  • Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (16 ratings)

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Underground Airlines

Written by: Ben Winters
Narrated by: William DeMeritt
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Publisher's Summary

It is the present day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking, and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: The Civil War never occurred.

A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshal Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four". On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right—with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself.

A mystery to himself, Victor suppresses his memories of his childhood on a plantation and works to infiltrate the local cell of an abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines. Tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraordinary stakes of Jackdaw's case as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child, who may be Victor's salvation. Victor himself may be the biggest obstacle of all—though his true self remains buried, it threatens to surface.

Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four—secrets the government will preserve at any cost.

Underground Airlines is a groundbreaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.

©2016 Ben Winters (P)2016 Hachette Audio

What the critics say

Campbell Memorial Award, 2017, Third Place

NOMINATED FOR THE BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL ITW THRILLER AWARD

A FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE

A New York Times Bestseller; a Goodreads Choice finalist; named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Hudson Bookseller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkus Reviews, AudioFile Magazine, and Amazon

"This one kept me up at night and changed the way I saw the world once I was finished."—Ann Patchett, Time

"This is one of the most thoughtful and inventive books I've read. Part alternate history and part detective novel, Underground Airlines couldn't be more timely or thrilling. It's a page-turner with a big mission: to warn against placing our history on a dusty shelf. On every page is the spirit of Faulkner's quote—The past is never dead. It's not even past. Here, Winters takes America's legacy as a slaveholding nation all the way to its logical and terrifying conclusion."—Attica Locke, Edgar Award-nominated author of Bluebird, Bluebird

"An extraordinary work of alternate history . . . Indisputably a winner"—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

What listeners say about Underground Airlines

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captivating from start to finish

I loved it it was easy listening and mesmerizing. there was so much detail that I could physically see everything happening in front of me. can't wait for the sequel.

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