Kindred (by Octavia Butler)

My "classic by a person of color" pick for the Read Harder Challenge.  The premise is that Dana, a black woman living in modern-day 1978, is somehow pulled back into the past of her ancestors by Rufus, a boy whose life is in danger.  (Whenever he is near death, Dana is "summoned" from the future to save him.) Rufus is the son of a slaveowner, and lives on a plantation, and as he grows up, Dana returns to him over and over again, trying to navigate life as a slave and among slaves, adjust to her changing relationship with Rufus, and not lose her modern sense of self or her relationship with her (white) husband.

Having read a lot of painful narratives of slavery lately, what surprised me most is what a fast read this was and how little Butler deals with the modern-day narrative. I expected much more about Kevin's and Dana's contrasting experiences in the past, and how it might pull them apart in various ways.  It definitely feels like a book written decades ago, in that sense -- it does not grapple with issues of race the way I feel like we are in 2017 grappling with those issues. Instead, it focuses on telling Dana's story of her experience in a complex and painful past.

Overall, it's a riveting story, well-told. Dana is a great character and the pace is unrelenting (she spends hours or days at home while in Rufus's world, years pass.) I couldn't put this one down, and really enjoyed it.