I thought about giving this book four stars, simply because I wanted more at the end. But I suppose that's the mark of a great book. This book was difficult to read. I had to set it down many times. In this story Dana, an African American woman, travels back to the early 1800s whenever a white boy named Rufus is in trouble. The mechanism for her ability to travel this way is not explained and it doesn't need to be. She only returns to her time when she fears for her life and is truly about to die. Time does not pass quickly in her former 1976 life, but it does in the early 1800s. As a black woman, Dana is made a slave, beaten, threatened with rape, and forced to witness terrible cruelties that no one can completely understand unless they experience them as a slave. Dana's husband, a white man named Kevin, also winds up in this antebellum landscape for a time. During that time Dana is better protected, but still essentially a slave. She watches Rufus grow up over the times that she is called to him. Four times Dana saves his life. She does what she can to influence Rufe to be a better man, but she can't take the slaveholder ideas out of his head. Dana eventually discovers that Rufus is her ancestor, as he raped one of his slaves.
This book deals with some very hard truths, ones that the reader cannot completely grasp. In all of my reading I've only ever read one other text that made slavery feel so real, and that was The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by a former slave. This speaks to Octavia Butler's ability to write and make Dana's feelings leap off of the page and also to Damian Duffy's ability to adapt this story into a graphic novel form. It did take some time for me to get used to the artist's style, but I did enjoy it. I thought it was an interesting choice that Dana's original timeline (1976) is in sepia, and the antebellum timeline is in full color.
This book has given me much to chew on, so to speak. I believe all white adults and young adults, high school age and older, should read this book, especially white adults. Octavia and Damian show how easy it is to slip into the mindset of oppression. We must avoid it all cost, even in our present day lives. Slavery may be gone, but racism, bigotry, and misogyny most certainly are not.