There’s been lots of chatter lately about the relative merits of the superhero movie. I can’t say it’s my favorite genre, but I’ll make an exception for real life superheroes like Harriet Tubman.

To be sure, Kasi Lemmons’ biopic of the legendary Underground Railroad conductor is strictly in a mythologizing mood. But so what? Few Americans deserve the kind of hagiography that Tubman receives here. In some ways, it would be impossible to overstate how brave, important, and singular a figure she was.

When we first meet Harriet (Cynthia Erivo) on a farm in Dorchester County, MD, you don’t see any of this coming. She’s a slave, who goes by the first name of Minty. Her husband (Zackary Momoh) and father (Clarke Peters) are both free men, but their freedom seems precarious. Her mother and siblings are still slaves (a lawyer’s letter demanding that they be released from their bondage, as per a previous arrangement, is unceremoniously ripped up).

Harriet prays for her master’s death—and it comes, the first indication that the film really does see her as a prophet of sorts, bestowed with extraordinary gifts. (The film takes the fact that Harriet can see the future and communicate with God as canon.) But this doesn’t free her. She still has the master’s self-pitying wife and mean-spirited son Gideon (British actor Joe Alwyn, distractingly handsome and dandyish in the role) to contend with. Gideon saw Harriet praying for his father’s death, so he decides to sell her. That’s when she knows she must escape to the north, where black men and women can live free.

This, of course, will prove to be the first of many trips Harriet makes to the north and back—and each plays out like an edge of your seat adventure film, with terrifyingly high stakes. In this first escape, Harriet is being pursued by men on horseback and bloodhounds. When they find her, she’s standing at the precipice of a rapid river. This is when she makes the now famous declaration, “I’m going to be free or die,” and off she jumps.

There are more perils along the way until she makes it to Philadelphia. In a remarkable scene, she finds herself in the center of this bustling city, stunned by the black men and women who are walking free. A friendly stranger tells her to stand tall. There’s nothing to hide from here.

In Philly, she’s introduced to William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), who has dedicated his life to helping and documenting the stories of slaves. He’s incredulous when he discovers that Harriet has made this journey on her own. It won’t be the last time he underestimates her. William takes Harriet to the boarding house run by the beautiful, uncommonly dignified Marie Buchanan (Janelle Monaé), who immediately comes to admire and love her new charge.

We revisit Harriet a year later and see her as a new woman—no longer meek in any way, but indeed, standing tall and in her power. This is when she decides she must return to Maryland to free her husband and siblings. She gets so good at freeing slaves she becomes a folklore like figure, called Moses. And some slave owners, refusing to believe that they are being outwitted by a black man (they assume she’s a man, of course), speculate that she’s an abolitionist in black face.

I can’t overstate how great Erivo is in this role, as we watch Harriet evolve from a scared (if determined) slave to a free woman whose passionate faith in God and herself inspires a movement. Erivo doesn’t deify Tubman—she can be stubborn, dour, and even bullying—but she depicts her in all her fierceness, righteousness, and glory.

Yes, the film is a straightforward biopic that will certainly be shown in high school history classes for generations to come. I’m fine with that. This kind of American history deserves a film like this. And lest you think the film is exaggerating Harriet Tubman’s bravery and accomplishments, please remember that she was a conductor of the Underground Railroad, the first woman to lead an armed expedition into war, a Union spy, an abolitionist, and a leading supporter of women’s suffrage. If that’s not a superhero, I don’t know who is.

When it was announced that the $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman, the famed abolitionist who was born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, was indefinitely delayed, an enterprising artist named Dano Wall created a stamp that admirers of Tubman could superimpose on the bill.

Now Tubman fans have something else to look forward to: the new Focus Features biopic Harriet, which will have its debut at the Toronto Film Festival and be released nationwide on November 1.

Based on the trailer, the film seems to focus on the first time Tubman escaped from slavery and her unthinkably brave decision to return south to help free others, eventually making her the most significant figure of the Underground Railroad.

There’s lots to be excited about: The film is directed by the talented Kasi Lemmons, who previously directed the sultry Eve’s Bayou. It stars the scene-stealing Cynthia Erivo, recently seen electrifying audiences in Widows and Bad Times at the El Royale, as Tubman. Heavy hitting costars include Janelle Monaé, Joe Alwyn, and Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr.

If there’s one disappointment, it’s that the film was shot in central Virginia, not Maryland, where Tubman was born and raised. Still, Tubman admirers in Maryland have lots of opportunities to celebrate and learn more about her life, at both the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center and the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center.

Until then, watch the trailer, below.

A legend lives on in the low, tidal marsh of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge outside of Cambridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. There, where runaway slaves once navigated the loblolly pines, wispy strands of cattails, and dark inky water to seek safe passage on the Underground Railroad, now stands an archipelago of barn-like buildings to honor the illustrious life of the network’s most noted conductor. 

More than 20 years in the making, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center opened in March with a celebration that included Tubman’s descendants, who offered extensive input on the center’s creation. “They still have the tenets of faith and family,” says assistant park manager Angela Crenshaw. “That is our focus here with these exhibits.” 

Managed by the Maryland and National Park services, the 15,000-square-foot state-of-the-art visitor’s center serves as a gateway to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, a scenic stretch that runs from the Chesapeake Bay through Philadelphia with stops at local landmarks related to Tubman’s life. 

“This is such an important story,” says Alan Reed, president of Baltimore-based GWWO Architects, which designed the center. “We said to ourselves, we want everything—the architecture, the materials, the experience of moving through the exhibits—to somehow relate back.”

The buildings themselves represent different stations along the Underground Railroad, while the exhibits revolve around a symbolic “view north.” Through a barn wood gateway, the exhibit faces toward floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook a thick forest to the north, before taking tangled twists and turns, similar to those that runaway slaves likely faced during their escapes. 

“It was never a simple journey,” says GWWO senior associate Chris Elcock. “In the exhibits, you find yourself bouncing around, and when you get to the end, you go back the way you came, because that’s what Harriet did. But you’re going to be changed. Each time she returned, she had new information, so she could be a better conductor.”

 The exhibits span Tubman’s courageous life, from her childhood as a slave in Dorchester County to her extraordinary efforts in the Civil War to her late-life role in the women’s suffrage movement. There’s a wall honoring some of the 70 people she helped rescue, and a mural featuring an iconic illustration from Jacob Lawrence’s 1968 children’s book, Harriet and the Promised Land. Throughout, slavery’s terror stands in stark contrast to the region’s natural beauty and Tubman’s unwavering sense of faith.  

One of the most serene yet stirring elements is a life-size statue of Tubman, who will eventually replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, making her the first female and African-American on American currency. She is seated on a church bench beneath faux stained glass windows and a quote by Frederick Douglass, another Maryland slave turned abolitionist. “The midnight sky and silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and your heroism,” he wrote in an 1868 letter to Tubman. 

Out here, beneath the pines, we now bear witness, too.