Dana, a young, African-American girl of the 1970s, finds herself inexplicably linked to Rufus, a distant white relative in the 1800s. As Dana is continually "called" back in time to Rufus, Dana is forced to adjust to life as a slave as her reality, and faces the dissonance between her current life in the 70s (married to a white man) and her "past-current" life seen as a "freed slave" in the 1800s.

Wow, wow, wow! Butler is an incredible writer! She asks and examins hard questions in this book: How could people really believe other people were property? What made slaves stay? What made them leave? And that's just scratching the surface - this book is thick with imagery, symbolism, and all kinds of literary devices I can't remember right now. ;) I'd love to teach this book in a high school AP class!

Butler's character development of her main characters is fascinating. Dana's "assimilation" into slavery over the period of the book is completely believable. The other slaves' "rejection" of her makes sense. Rufus's back-and-forth, hot-and-cold nature makes sense in his context. It's all about survival. At the end, the "role reversal" of Kevin and Dana (Kevin calling out how awful Rufus had been, and Dana making excuses for him) was incredibly fascinating, and I'm still mulling over the symbolism there. There was so much going on in this book!

There were a few parts that I found confusing, but I honestly think they were confusing because I was reading this as a white woman.

I simply cannot imagine how groundbreaking this book (and her others!) were when it was first published. This is definitely a read-again. There's a lot to digest here, and I don't think I got all of it in the first read. I'm *really* looking forward to reading more by Butler!

Pairings: The Handmaid's Tale; Poisonwood Bible; Things Fall Apart; The Time Machine