Cover image of "Underground Airlines,"

Early in 1861, a pro-slavery fanatic assassinates President-Elect Abraham Lincoln on a visit to Indianapolis. This event sets the scene for Ben H. Winters’ tension-filled alternate history thriller, Underground Airlines. Lacking Lincoln’s leadership, the American government stumbles into an uneasy compromise with the slave-holding states of the South. A century and a half later, incentives to wean away many of the original states of the would-be Confederacy have left just four Deep South states with legalized slavery. And this is 21st-century slavery, housed in gleaming, high-tech garment factories as well as the cotton fields that feed them. But little has changed in fundamental ways. And the US Marshals Service pursues runaway slaves on behalf of the “Hard Four” slaveholding states. This is a story full of twists and turns, with surprises galore.

A former slave tracks runaways from the 21st-century South

Winters’ protagonist is a DHS agent skilled in tracking down escaped slaves all across the North. He is himself a former slave, forced into his morally compromising work by a ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy. We never learn his true name. His DHS handler calls him Victor, but he operates under a variety of pseudonyms using carefully chosen disguises to fit the circumstances of each job. And there have been more than 200 jobs, each one resulting in the return of a fellow Black man (or woman) to bondage in the South. For “Victor,” the work is mind-numbing. He is haunted by his own brutal experience growing up a slave with a protective older brother he mourns on a daily basis. Then a baffling new assignment upends—and threatens—his life.

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters (2025) 338 pages ★★★★★

Photo of forced laborers at work in an Asian garment factory, probably 21st-century slavery
Forced laborers—slaves, effectively—at work in a South Asian garment factory. What if the US Civil War never took place, and the workers here were African Americans in bondage in the South today? Image: QIMA

A conspiracy of shattering proportions

Victor’s new assignment takes him to Indianapolis. There, he tracks down a young Catholic priest known to be a key figure in the Underground Airlines, the latter-day descendant of the original Underground Railroad. Father Barton is a fanatical abolitionist but resists Victor’s effort to infiltrate his network with a false story of a lover who remains enslaved in a Southern garment factory. Victor is, in fact, pursuing an escaped PBL (Person Bound to Labor) named Jackdaw, whose real name is unknown. Eventually, with the help of a desperate young mother who approaches him for help, Victor does manage, after great difficulty, to penetrate Father Barton’s operation . . . only to find himself in peril for his life back in the South. There, the story takes several new twists and turns as Victor learns that Mr. Cook has concealed his real purpose on the job, which involves a conspiracy of shattering proportions. He attempts to use the knowledge as a way to free himself from the Marshals Service.

Route map of the original Underground Railroad like the Underground Airlines in this novel about 21st-century slavery
Route map of the original Underground Railroad. In the novel, just four Deep South states continue holding slaves. Image: PBS

Summary of the novel by artificial intelligence

Following is a summary of Underground Airlines I obtained from the AI chatbot, Claude (version Sonnet 4.5). It’s verbatim with two minor exceptions: I corrected two tiny spelling errors and inserted subheads to ease readability. Please note: there are no “hallucinations” here. Claude’s work is accurate in every respect.

Tracking down escaped slaves in the North

Ben H. Winters’ Underground Airlines is a haunting exploration of America’s original sin, reimagined through the lens of speculative fiction. This alternate history thriller asks a devastating question: What if the Civil War never happened, and slavery still existed in modern America?

The novel follows Victor, a Black man working as a bounty hunter for the U.S. Marshals Service, tracking down escaped slaves who flee from the “Hard Four”—the four states where slavery remains legal in the present day. Victor’s position is one of profound moral complexity: himself once enslaved, he now captures others to maintain his own freedom. This Faustian arrangement forms the emotional core of the novel, as Victor grapples with self-loathing and justification in equal measure.

Winters crafts a terrifyingly plausible world where constitutional compromises and political expediency have allowed this brutal institution to persist into the 21st century. The brilliance lies in the details—corporations profiting from slave labor, northern states participating in willful ignorance, and a society that has normalized the abnormal through sanitized language and bureaucratic distance. The “PBLs” (Persons Bound to Labor) terminology and the clinical efficiency of the system make the horror all the more chilling.

A taut thriller framed in alternative history

The plot itself is a taut thriller, as Victor pursues an escaped slave while uncovering a conspiracy that challenges everything he understands about his role in this dystopian America. Winters’ background in mystery writing serves him well here, maintaining tension while never letting the genre elements overshadow the weightier themes at play.

What makes Underground Airlines particularly powerful is how it functions as both speculative fiction and social commentary. By placing slavery in a contemporary setting, Winters strips away historical distance and forces readers to confront the mechanisms of oppression, complicity, and systemic racism. The novel suggests uncomfortable parallels to our own reality—mass incarceration, economic exploitation, and the ways societies rationalize injustice.

No easy answers or comfortable conclusions

However, the book’s greatest strength is also its limitation. Some critics have noted that a white author writing this particular alternate history raises questions about perspective and voice. Additionally, the ending may feel somewhat abrupt to readers expecting fuller resolution.

Despite these considerations, Underground Airlines succeeds as a thought-provoking thriller that refuses to offer easy answers or comfortable conclusions. It’s a novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page, challenging readers to examine not just an alternate America, but the uncomfortable truths about our actual one.

About the author

Photo of Ben Winters, author of this novel about 21st-century slavery
Ben Winters. Image: Nicola Goode – ReadMoreCO

Ben H. Winters has written 12 novels, five audio originals, three books of poetry, and five stageplays. He was also the creator of the television series, Tracker. Most readers know him for The Last Policeman trilogy.

Winters was born in Maryland in 1976. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, presumably late in the 1990s, but published his first novel only in 2009. He now ives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

I’ve also reviewed three other novels by Ben Winters:

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