SANFORD — Mark Alan Lesli, author of  “True North: Tice’s Story,” will speak about the Underground Railroad at 6 p.m. Oct. 30 at  Louis B. Goodall Memorial Library at 952 Main St., Sanford.

Leslie’s novel, was a Publishers Weekly Featured Book, and weaves a tale of the dangers of this time in history. Southern Mainers, he said, risked heavy fines and jail terms to operate “way stations” on the “railroad” where they hid, fed and transported escaping slaves.

“Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ was instrumental in raising awareness of the scourge of slavery, but it took scores of people here in Maine to make the dream of escape a reality,” Leslie said.

He said that known way stations in York County were located in Alfred, Berwick, Waterboro, Parsonsfield, Porter, Newfield, Eliot, Kennebunkport and Biddeford.

“The state’s Underground Railroad itself was a marvel of secret connections from churches to hack stands, second-hand clothing stores and peoples homes,” Leslie said. “Slaves sometimes escaped aboard ships, but more often northward on land.”

The winner of six national magazine writing awards, Leslie first emerged on the literary scene in 2008 with his novel “Midnight Rider for the Morning Star,” based on the life of Francis Asbury, America’s first circuit-riding preacher. Since then he has written “The Crossing,” (2017), an action thriller about the Ku Klux Klan in Maine in the 1920s, and four contemporary action adventures: “Operation Jeremiah’s Jar” (published Oct. 15), “The Last Aliyah” (spring 2018), “The Three Sixes” (2017) and “Chasing the Music” (2016).