Kindred

 Butler, Octavia. Kindred. 2004 (first published 1979). 287p. ISBN 9780807083697. Available at FIC BUT on the library shelves.

It is June 1976, and the United States is about to turn 200 years old. Dana, an African-American writer, has just moved in a new house in Los Angeles with her husband, Kevin, who is also a writer. Kevin is White, but in Southern California a mixed couple does not even raise an eyebrow. While moving books on a bookshelf, Dana suddenly feels very dizzy, and she passes out. She comes to on the side of a river, where a red-headed boy is struggling in the water, his mother yelling on the shore. 

Without thinking, Dana jumps in the river and saves the young boy. Instead of being grateful, the young boy's mother is very upset at Dana, and she tells her to get away from Rufus, her son. Her husband soon arrives with a shotgun, and threatens Dana. She faints again, and wakes up with Kevin holding her. Even though she was gone for about an hour, it has only been a few seconds since she collapsed. If she wasn't wet, Dana would have assumed she had dreamed this whole sequence.

Dana takes a shower and changes clothes, only to become dizzy again and passes out. She finds herself in a house, where the same boy as before, but now a few years older, has lit a curtain on fire. She manages to put the fire out. In a conversation with Rufus, she realizes she has traveled back to 1815 in rural Maryland, and finds herself in the room of the plantation owner's son. Being African-American, she is presumed to be a runaway slave, so Rufus directs her to the house of a free woman, where she meets Alice Greenwood. Remembering an inscription in her family bible, which has been handed down over many generations, Dana suddenly realizes that both Alice and Rufus are her ancestors. Threatened with rape, Dana faints and wakes up back in Los Angeles, where only a few minutes have gone by.

Over the next two weeks, Dana travels back to Rufus and the plantation several times. Every time the boy's life is threatened, Dana finds herself pulled in, and every time her own life is threatened, she finds herself pulled out. She learns to live on the plantation and the desperation and dangers that slaves faced. Can Dana survive this ordeal long enough to navigate the webs of violence and ensure that her family survives?

A great science-fiction story that incorporates a history many readers are not familiar with, Kindred provides the perspective of someone who comes from the future and who is being forced into the role of a slave. Fans of historical novels will not be distracted by the time-traveling aspect and will appreciate Dana's struggle to reconcile modern ideas of race relations with her ancestors' bigotry and cleaved social norms.