“But people wanted a story. And I was the one to tell it. Girl, the most you could ever do for them is now.”

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas is a vast, soaring and fascinating work of historical fiction which shows the power of telling your story. 

In the late 1800s, Lensinda Marten is living in Dunmore, Ontario, a town where those fleeing enslavement come for freedom and a new start. She is a writer for the local paper, a storyteller by trade. When a white man (and slave hunter) is murdered in town by an older woman (who just arrived in Dunmore), Lensinda is tasked with finding out what really happened from the woman herself. But her interviewee doesn’t just want to tell her story, she wants to trade stories, which opens up truths and realizations for both of the women and their pasts.

While there were many characters to keep up with, I found myself happy and rewarded in the end as each one pulses with life, resiliency and authenticity. Thomas writes confidently and always with a clear sense of place. This was truly an eye-opening window into Canada's place in the history of slavery in North America. There are important, frank explorations of race, particularly the different experiences of Canada's different peoples (Black, Indigenous, mixed race). 

In the Upper Country is about the power of telling your story and listening to the stories of others. Stories have the power to fill in the gaps, form connections and give our struggles meaning. This novel puts into perspective something that we all take for granted today, which is our ability to document our lives. Especially for those who did not read or write, those who did write down the stories played a critical role: keeping the past alive.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read and review this title.

Set in Dunmore, a fictional Ontario border town along the terminus of the Underground Railroad, In the Upper Country is a moving and fascinating family saga about an old woman's life and journey to freedom just as both are in danger of ending after she kills a slave-catcher attempting to illegally capture her. Her tale is recounted to a prickly Black journalist named Lensinda Martin, the main character, who was born free but herself fled to Dunmore with a painful past, whose goal it to write Cash's story in such a compelling way that it both exonerates her and protects Dunmore from the repercussions of Cash's actions.

What results is an at first grudging then gradually amenable trading of stories between Lensinda and Cash about various people—both men and women, both free and enslaved (and/or formerly enslaved), both Black and Indigenous in both America and Canada—that intertwine in a non-sequential, dual timeline narrative that reveals slavery-era interactions, alliances, and committed relationships between Black and Indigenous people, as well as the connection of both to the land, amidst mutual oppression by the white colonial powers.

The book is extremely well-written, each character fully realized with a breadth of personal history that demonstrates the horrors of slavery and colonization yet also reveals the strength and endurance of the human spirit. Although at times a bit hard to keep track of how everyone was related/connected to everyone else, it all came together so well in the end. Highly recommended!

I wanted to like this. I really wanted to like this. The imagery and writing are very lovely. However, the structure of this book is just very disjointed. I was confused as to who was telling what story and ultimately why things were happening.

3.5

Kai Thomas has crafted a wonderful story of two strong-willed women, the fictional town of Dummore located in Upper Canada, and the history of slavery in North America.

Lensinda Martin is a Black journalist in mid-1800s Ontario. She lives in Dunmore, a place settled by escaping slaves from America. Lensinda is drawn into a messy situation when a slave hunter is killed by Cash, an elderly woman hiding in the town. Cash refuses to flee to save herself, and the farmer hiding her asks Lensinda to get Cash's testimony before Cash's trial.

Cash insists on the two women exchanging tales, forcing Lensinda to listen to not only how Cash ended up killing the man after her, but how Cash started life as a slave and the many horrible things she experienced over her long years. Along the say, Lensinda begins to get inklings that Cash's past and her own are linked, and Lensinda also sees how intricate and intertwined the relationships are between the indigenous, white and Blacks on the continent.

This was an utterly mesmerizing story of how interconnected the lives and cultures are of the indigenous with whites, and with freed and enslaved Blacks in North America. Kai Thomas’ voice is confident and often lyrical as Lensinda and Cash trade stories and parts of their experiences with each other. The history of North America is complex, and the border between Canada and the US is ephemeral as people travel between the two countries, but attitudes and ideas and blood connect them into a complicated and messy whole.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Penguin Random House Canada for this ARC in exchange for my review.

November 21, 2023 Update Now the winner of the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Award for Fiction. Read further about the winner and the 2023 shortlist here.


Upper Country Underground
Review of the Viking hardcover original (January 10, 2023).

For nearly a decade now, refugees from slavery have been under the terror of the fugitive slave act, putting them in peril of their lives at every turn in their native land. This act has driven thousands into Canada, and now it is not only the fugitive but the fugitive hunter who makes bold incursions into British domain.

Shortlisted for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize with the winner to be announced November 21, 2023.

This is an ambitious novel which covers a variety of little known history and sometimes secret history. It includes the settlements inhabited in Southwestern Ontario (called Upper Canada at the time) by both freeborn blacks and fugitive slaves from the U.S. south, slave hunters crossing borders in manhunts, the sometime bonds & mixed marriages between indigenous peoples and black canadians/americans, the War of 1812 and the alliance of Tecumseh's Native Confederacy and Britain against the United States, the slavery-era in Canada before it was banned, the Underground Railroad from the U.S. to Canada with actual underground cavern cities.

It is a challenge to take it all in, especially as it is not all told chronologically. It unfolds in the fictional town of Dunmore in 1859 (near Chatham, Ontario close to the Canada/U.S. Detroit border), where an elderly escaped slave-woman named Cash has been jailed for shooting an American slave-hunter who tried to capture her. A young woman reporter Lensinda (aka Sinda) is sent to the jail to get Cash's story for the local newspaper The Coloured Canadian. Cash will only reveal her story in exchange for stories from Sinda, and that is the setup for the rest of the book as the two woman trade tales which culminate in the discovery of their hidden personal connection.

I would have wanted to give this a 5 rating but it is the sprawling nature of it which makes for some difficulty in following along. I kept thinking about what could have been done further to give the reader a path to follow. A set of Family Trees or a List of Characters would have been a strong plus (this could have been placed at the back if some would have considered them spoilers). An index of the chronology of the stories within the chapters would also have made a big difference. These are all things that I picture doing in notations on a second read-through, so in a sense the reader has to do some of the editing themselves. Some will appreciate the challenge, but even if the whole picture doesn't come through clearly, the individual tales here are harrowing, terrifying and often desperate, with a peace still to be found at the end.

I read In the Upper Country through being introduced to it at the 2023 Lakefield Literary Festival.


Author Kai Thomas (right) in discussion with moderator John Barber (left) and author Waubgeshig Rice ([b:Moon of the Turning Leaves|123644851|Moon of the Turning Leaves|Waubgeshig Rice|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1684818524l/123644851._SX50_.jpg|94622931] (2023)) at the 2023 Lakefield Literary Festival, Canada.

Other Reviews
A Tree Planting Encounter Inspires Historical Black Fiction by Brett Josef Grubisic, Toronto Star, January 6, 2023.

Kai Thomas weaves myth and history in debut novel In the Upper Country, Emily Donaldson, Globe and Mail, February 2, 2023.

Trivia and Links
Author Kai Thomas is interviewed on NPR Radio, January 12, 2023 about the release of the book. You can read the transcript and listen to the audio.

As author Kai Thomas explains in his excellent Afterword, he was inspired to write this novel after learning about settlements similar to Dunmore in Southwestern Ontario. A likely inspiration is the town of Buxton (now North & South Buxton) near Chatham, Ontario. A photograph was another inspiration:

I came across a photograph of John “Daddy” Hall, a man of African and Indigenous descent who has an incredible story. He had fought in the War of 1812, been captured and survived decades of slavery in Kentucky, and escaped all the way up to Owen Sound, Ontario, where he became the town crier and lived to be over 115 years old. It was a story that brought together several corners of history I had never truly examined: black-native alliances in slavery-era Canada, Indigenous sovereignty, the Underground Railroad, and the politics of free black settlement.