The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Set aboard a nineteenth century riverboat theater, this is the moving, page-turning story of a charmingly frank and naive seamstress who is blackmailed into saving runaways on the Underground Railroad, jeopardizing her freedom, her livelihood, and a new love. It’s 1838, and May Bedloe works as a seamstress for her cousin, the famous actress Comfort … cousin, the famous actress Comfort Vertue–until their steamboat sinks on the Ohio River. Though they both survive, both must find new employment. Comfort is hired to give lectures by noted abolitionist, Flora Howard, and May finds work on a small flatboat, Hugo and Helena’s Floating Theatre, as it cruises the border between the northern states and the southern slave-holding states.
May becomes indispensable to Hugo and his troupe, and all goes well until she sees her cousin again. Comfort and Mrs. Howard are also traveling down the Ohio River, speaking out against slavery at the many riverside towns. May owes Mrs. Howard a debt she cannot repay, and Mrs. Howard uses the opportunity to enlist May in her network of shadowy characters who ferry babies given up by their slave mothers across the river to freedom. Lying has never come easy to May, but now she is compelled to break the law, deceive all her new-found friends, and deflect the rising suspicions of Dr. Early who captures runaways and sells them back to their southern masters.
As May’s secrets become more tangled and harder to keep, the Floating Theatre readies for its biggest performance yet. May’s predicament could mean doom for all her friends on board, including her beloved Hugo, unless she can figure out a way to trap those who know her best.more
The Underground River showed a fascinating little-known aspect of American History that I found riveting. I’ve read books on slavery, my favorite is Cane River by Lalita Tademy, and of course I have heard of the Underground Railroad, but Martha Conway brings to life The Underground River– hiding and transporting slaves on riverboats, to the safety of the north. And not only a riverboat, but a Show Boat, complete with flamboyant actors and sensitive musicians who traveled up and down the river, advertising nightly shows to towns. The characters are vivid, nuanced and flawed, not a one is flat or contrived. I loved Conway’s descriptions which made me feel the mossy, dark river, the queasiness of the listing boat, the underlying terror of slavery, and what it would have been like to help slaves children escape, even if they never saw their parents again. I need to read again, I think! (less) [edit]
“Allen gehört was du denkst; dein eigen ist nur, was du fühlst. What you think belongs to all, what you feel is yours alone.”
May Bedloe, a young seamstress, survives a steamboat accident and finds herself out of work as her cousin, Comfort: an aging actress, is hired as an abolitionist speaker. Comfort’s benefactor offers to send May home, but there isn’t anything there for her anymore and instead, she takes the money offered and becomes the “costumer” for The Floating Theater, as they coast up and down the Ohio between the North and the Confederate South, entertaining anyone who could afford it.
The price May must pay for misusing the abolitionist’s money may come at too high a price when she is blackmailed into smuggling slaves across the Ohio, almost losing her life more than once in the process. Her moral ambiguity is tried and tested as she comes to terms with what she’s chosen. Is she willing to overlook her own beliefs to be with those she cares about?
I won this book in a giveaway, and it languished on my nightstand for a while until the story caught my imagination and I simply could not put it down until I finished it. I found it wandering around in my dreams, and my response of tears towards the end was overwhelming. Martha Conway has written a crackerjack of a historical novel and takes you with her as she braves the twists and turns of the history of abolition and the Underground Railroads in America. Highly Recommended 5/5
An atmospheric novel with a strong voice. I could smell the murky river water from the comfort of my bed and feel the needle poking through the thread of the costumes May sewed for the actors who performed on the river boat. From the very beginning, May’s commentary on the life around her drew me in, and when she found herself in an impossible situation, she showed her pluck and surprised me. Every time she crossed that river in the dead of night, I held my breath. For anyone who loves historical fiction and those who enjoyed Colston Whitehead’s Underground Railroad.
This story of a young woman’s first real-time exposure to slavery unfolds on a floating theater travelling the Ohio River in 1838. May Bedloe is a seamstress serving as an assistant to her itinerant-actress cousin. It’s a second-class life of little comfort, freedom or meaning, but when the boat carrying them to their next job sinks in a horrific accident near Cincinnati, both are forced to find new employment. May’s cousin accepts a job with a wealthy benefactor whose offer doesn’t include May; May is given money to intended to fund her return to Cleveland. She uses it instead to secure employment on a theater boat whose owner has lost his sister-business partner in the same disaster that stranded May. When her cousin’s benefactor learns that May did not use the money as intended and that May’s boat is making stops on both the Ohio and Kentucky sides of the river, May finds herself blackmailed into smuggling runaway slaves across the water to freedom, gravely endangering herself and everyone around her.
The overarching theme is of course riveting, but the underlying themes are compelling as well, particularly what single women without resources had to do to achievement employment and support themselves, and what compromises to character and comfort, both physical and moral, that involved. Charming example: May is a straight-talker who seems to have no concept of the occasional necessity of lying, either for self-preservation or out of compassion. A riverboat colleague teaches her the Greek alphabet as a means of evaluating when a lie is called for, telling her that “Lying is a part of the human condition. It’s what separates us from the beasts in the wild.”
May’s evolution from having only heard about slavery to actually confronting it and taking action, first by force, then by choice, resonated with me on a personal level. My earliest ancestors in this country arrived in Cincinnati in 1838 as German immigrants, similar age to May, and of meager social stature. I don’t know what they fled or why, or how they landed in Cincinnati, or what skills they brought to begin a life there. Were they but a few degrees of separation different than those freed slaves? Most intriguingly, I wonder what they knew about the scourge just across the river, and what they might have thought or done about it. The Underground River prods us to think about the tentacles of slavery and how ordinary people inconspicuously but with quiet courage, answered its call to action, rising and responding to evil in ways they never imagined. It’s a message that certainly has its place and its parallels in today’s world.
In The Underground River largely takes place on a riverboat in 1838. Conway has created compelling characters and a story so well-written that I was transported to that era and it’s “Floating Theatre.” This was a perfect setting and vehicle for the thrilling dilemma of young and courageous characters who are dealing with the jagged, lethal line between “North” and “South.” The sympathetic May Bedloe, her journey of self-discovery, her new friends and budding romance, as well as the color and humor of theatre life, draws us in, even as the danger and challenges deepen. We see May’s growing attraction to her boss, Captain Hugo from her point of view, and Conway’s lovely touches of caring by Hugo tell us all along that Hugo returns her feelings.
My only quibble (proving my involvement with the story!) with this worthwhile novel was at the end, when May’s uncertainty about whether the bully and blackmailer, Mrs. Flora Howard, set her up on the boat from the beginning, disturbed me. I would rather have known, for sure, that May was not a pawn in a larger scheme from page one, that her journey was her own. I’d like to think this was all her anger and fear playing upon her imagination.
Just a quibble. Highly recommended – a little-known period of history, with fresh places, people, and situations!
I read many books that I enjoy, but it’s only occasionally that I read something that I envy as a writer, thinking, “I wish I had written that.” Martha Conway’s novel, The Underground River, falls into that category.
Set in 1838, it’s the story of a plain-speaking, awkward seamstress who falls in with a theatrical troupe that travels the Ohio River. After she’s blackmailed into helping slaves flee northward to freedom, her feelings about slavery undergo a (river) change. There’s a sweet love story, too.
It’s rare to read an historical novel that pulls you into its time and place without a lot of “signalling,” but this book does that with grace. And in a genre that is still haunted by the ghost of Harriet Beecher Stowe, it’s even rarer to read a novel that handles the moral issue of slavery without moralizing.
I liked the historical aspect of this book. The characters are developed well. The setting was different… it just fell flat for me.
May has long been controlled by her over-bearing cousin who is an actress. When the boat they are on catches fire, her cousin ditches her for a better oppurtunity working with an abolutionist. May gets work as a seamstress aboard a floating theater on the Ohio River (the border between the North and the South). It seems like she might be mildly autistic and struggles with relating to people, appropriate things to say, and taking everything seriously and literally. She starts to help with freeing slaves, at the great risk of herself, the people she is helping, her new friends and the company she works for.
Even with tradegy striking several times, I found the book to be slow and boring. I thought it sounded so interesting, maybe I would have liked it more if I was more interested in theater, plays, and costumes.
** It is clean and even with some heavy subject matter, its not a heavy or hard read