Before reading Elizabeth Cobbs’s The Tubman Command, the only thing I knew about Harriett Tubman was her role ushering slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Cobb’s impressively researched novel paints a more complete picture of the women behind and beyond the legend. Cobbs’s tale focuses on her role as an intelligence gatherer during the Civil War. She was a study in contrasts. Tiny in stature but enormous in chutzpah. She had the rare ability to unnoticed and underestimated on the one hand, and undoubted on the other. She is fierce, yet incredibly vulnerable due to injuries suffered at the hands of her former slave master. Tubman’s leadership skills and her ability to gain trust and the confidence of others was awe-inspiring; however, I found the storytelling a bit slow and more prolonged than necessary.