Science fiction

Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

In 1976 California, Black writer Dana is abruptly pulled through time to save Rufus, the white son of a slaveholding Maryland family and one of her own ancestors. Each return to the antebellum plantation lasts longer and demands greater compromises as Dana realizes that her family's existence depends on keeping Rufus alive without surrendering to his control. Her white husband Kevin is eventually drawn into the past as well, where racial hierarchy changes both their safety and their marriage. Harrowing and essential, this speculative classic suits readers prepared for racial violence, slavery, and abuse who appreciate time travel used to make history immediate, embodied, and impossible to romanticize.