Kindred

Dana, a young Black woman living in California in the 1970s, suddenly begins vanishing into the past without warning. Each time she is pulled into antebellum Maryland, she is thrown into danger and forced to adapt quickly in a world governed by slavery and racial violence.

Her time jumps are tied to a white boy named Rufus, whose survival is entangled with her own family line. As the years pass in the past while only moments or hours pass in the present, Dana is repeatedly sent back to keep him alive, even as he grows into a far more dangerous person.

As Dana and, at times, her white husband Kevin become caught up in plantation life, the story follows their attempts to survive, understand, and resist what surrounds them. The novel builds through repeated returns to the past, showing how each trip changes Dana physically and emotionally while tightening her bond to the people and history that shape her future.