To say I loved this book is a bit of an incongruity. How can someone love actual accounts from American, mid-19th refugee slaves, full-blown in matter-of-fact prose? There are horrors here that will drop the most hardened cynic to their knees.

I originally picked up the book as primary research for a future novel, and found myself once again climbing aboard my human rights soap box as I did as a girl in the late '60s and early '70s.

All of the accounts in the book, originally compiled in the 19th century, are from former slaves who rode the Underground Railroad to Canada. This should be required reading. ( )