A review by blairmahoney
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

5.0

The first book I've read by Butler and it definitely won't be the last. She doesn't bother with any of the mechanics of the time travel and the characters don't seem greatly concerned with trying to find an explanation for why the protagonist finds herself propelled into the past from 1970s California to a slave plantation in early nineteenth century Maryland, beyond the fact that she is 'called' at crucial times when an ancestor is in danger of dying. It's a terrific depiction of slavery and its implications and how someone from the present day would cope with being thrust into that world, on either side of the race divide. Published in 1979, this has not dated at all 40 years on which in itself is a fine form of time travel.