Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly is the fourteenth Benjamin January mystery, which starts off with a minstrel show. Unable to find orchestral work in New Orleans, Ben and Hannibal are touring with a circus, but soon have to hurry to Vicksburg, Mississippi, with Ben posing as Hannibal’s enslaved valet. This installment is mostly about the Underground Railroad and the complexities of how it might have operated, but of course there is also a murder, and negotiating the conservative society of Vicksburg, and avoiding a familiar face from the past, and of course serious peril for both Ben and Hannibal. Also, I am now stuck on the song referenced in the title.