Maine’s connection to the famous Underground Railroad that helped free runaway slaves in the mid-1800s does not begin and end with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Indeed, from Kittery to Fort Fairfield, Mainers conspired together to break the law — the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 — forming a network of “safe houses,” hiding slaves from slave hunters and scurrying them to Canada. Author Mark Alan Leslie will weave the tale of the brave families, including those from Augusta eastward, who housed and fed slaves in hidden rooms, attics and elsewhere en route to the next secret “way station” in the “railroad.” The Monmouth resident’s novel, True North: Tice’s Story, is a rousing adventure, following a slave’s escape from Kentucky on the Underground Railroad through Maine to Canada. Publisher’s Weekly selected True North as a Featured Book when it was released in 2016.