It stuns me how despite reading so many stories, real and fiction, about slavery, and the antebellum era in general, they still crush me, terrify me. The Underground Railroad did it too. The plight of Cora and the others on Randell's plantation is heart-wrenching. But that was it. I didn't like reading this book otherwise.
Firstly, I couldn't connect with the style of writing, it was disjointed and misleading. I had to reread many pages over and over again to make sense of the names and scenes that appeared without explanation. Cora, just like the writing throughout the book, felt detached from the story itself. It bothered me that she talked about things she wouldn't have known being on the plantation all her life. It felt like a lot of information was inserted through characters just because the author wanted to convey them somehow. A lot of the setting (the train, the liberation in NC and SC, etc.) didn't make sense either, which would have been fine if it wasn't working against the real stories of slaves that happened in those real places. All of these issues stopped me from accepting this story. This book would have worked great as an essay instead of a fiction piece.
But it's still an important book, telling important things that everyone needs to read, and I am glad I picked up this book.