ora (Thuso Mbedu) is an enslaved teen working in a plantation based in Georgia of the 1800s. The only thing that sets her apart from the rest of her kind is a burning desire to break free. As she decides to escape slavery — along with a fellow slave named Grace (Mychal-Bella Bowman) — she comes across a secret underground rail network. The duo then discover that the network has been created to help enslaved African-Americans on the run. The historical drama is a televised adaptation of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Colson Whitehead. Both the book and the show depict these networks in the form of an actual railway network with engines and tracks, engineers and station masters.