Kindred (novel)

Kindred (novel)

Kindred is a 1979 novel by Octavia Butler. While most of Butler's work is classified as science fiction, Kindred is often shelved in literature or African-American literature and Butler categorized the work as "a kind of grim fantasy".

The novel tells the story of Edana (Dana) Franklin, an African-American woman living in 1976 Altadena, California who, on her twenty-sixth birthday, begins the first of six involuntary journeys back in time to Maryland's Eastern Shore in the antebellum South. She soon finds out that she has been unconsciously summoned (through means that are never fully explained) by Rufus Weylin, a young white boy who is the son of a slave owner, Tom Weylin, and her distant ancestor. Rufus calls for Dana whenever he feels his life is in danger, from the time he is a child through to adulthood, forcing Dana to rescue him from the perceived immediate threat. But the cost is dear: Dana must also guarantee her own future survival by learning to exist on the plantation as a slave, including taking steps to ensure that one of her black ancestors on the plantation, Alice, the daughter of a free woman, has a child with Rufus, who will become Dana's direct ancestor.