Freedom, you can't get and bury, and keep it and keep it so it won't ever go away.
No, child.
You got to swing your freedom like a club.
In 1859, in a small town jail, deep in the forests of Canada, an elderly woman sits behind bars. She came to Dunmore via the Underground Railroad to escape enslavement, but an American bounty hunter tracked her down. Now she's in jail for killing him.
Lensinda Martin, a smart young reporter, wants to tell the woman's version of events, hoping that it will lead to her acquittal, but the woman will only tell her story on one condition: she gets one from Lensinda in return.
As the women swap stories - of family and first loves, of survival and freedom against all odds - it becomes apparent that their histories are interconnected, and a hidden bond between the two women is revealed which will change Lensinda's life forever.
Traveling along the path of the Underground Railroad from Virginia to Michigan, from the Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black refugee communities of Canada, In the Upper Country is an unforgettable debut about the interwoven history of peoples in North America, slavery and resistance, and two women reckoning with the stories they've been given, and the ones they want to tell.
Review
The harshly real and the fantastic mingle in ways that recall Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Water Dancer and Esi Edugyan's Washington Black. What's most impressive is Thomas's imaginative power; sure-handed, often lyrical prose; and strong, complex, resilient women. An exceptional work that mines a rich historical vein - Kirkus, starred review
In the Upper Country is not only fiction alive with history; it is historic. This masterful novel is the first to narrate the forging of the Afro-Métis - or Black & Indigenous - people out of European (or Indigenous) enslavement . . . practically every page turns up a sentence or a phrase that could have been penned by Toni Morrison or James Baldwin -- George Elliot Clarke, critically acclaimed poet and novelist
A sweeping epic that imagines all the ways our ancestors tried to get free. This is an exciting voice in fiction, as interested in the complexities of land and belonging as in the vagaries of human love and connection -- Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie
Stories within stories; until I read them, I hadn't realised these are ones I'd long been wanting, needing even. In this remarkable debut, Kai Thomas fills out the picture of a place, a time, peoples and their relationships, all previously neglected in the day-to-day unfolding of the nations. His immensely compelling details, and a host of voices so well-wrought you can see and hear the speakers long after you've finished reading, will leave you eager to see what he'll do next -- Shani Mootoo, author of Polar Vortex
Book Description
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 ambitious and inventive debut set at the terminus of the Underground Railroad.
About the Author
KAI THOMAS is a writer, carpenter and land steward. He is Afro-Canadian, born and raised in Ottawa, descended from Trinidad and the British Isles. In the Upper Country is his first novel.
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