This biography provides a comprehensive and gripping look at the life of Araminta Ross, who would become known to the world as Harriet Tubman. David A. Adler details her early life of brutal labor and a traumatic head injury that caused lifelong seizures. After escaping to freedom in 1849, Tubman returned to the South thirteen times, leading about 70 people to safety. The book expands beyond her "conductor" years to her service in the Civil War as a Union cook, nurse, and spy, as well as her later activism for women’s suffrage and the elderly. It is rich with primary sources, period photographs, and engravings that contextualize the social conditions of the 19th century.