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.