Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad by Ann Hagedorn

Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad by Ann Hagedorn explores the role of the people of Ripley, Ohio in the Underground Railroad. Hagedorn brings the Ohio River, Ripley and the surrounding area, the people on both sides of the river, and the war between abolitionists and slave owners/slave catchers to life in a way that immersed me in an area I thought I knew well. I grew up on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River but close enough to Ripley to have heard stories growing up that always intrigued me but seemed slightly surreal. Hagedorn's well researched book transported me right back to the 1800s and the people fighting slavery. I kept thinking about how humans always want to romanticize their cruelty, but Beyond the River cuts through the efforts to romanticize history straight to the dirty truth. Hagedorn doesn't try to make the struggle look admirable. She doesn't even paint the heroes as infallible as so often happens in the telling of history. Beyond the River tells the struggle not only between slave owners/slave catchers and the abolitionists/runaways but between the states themselves. Beyond the River is a well researched, well written story that has the power to provoke thought that could potentially lead to a better understanding of the history of the United States and how that history still affects us today.

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