Kindred by Octavia Butler, 306 pages.
Dana is a black author living in California the year of America's bicentennial. Which leaves her totally unprepared to be pulled through time to a plantation in Antebellum Maryland, where a young white boy is drowning. Dana finds herself being pulled back to the past to save this boy again and again, even as he grows into a man she is not sure is worth saving, and each trip is longer and more harrowing than the one before.
This is the first Octavia Butler novel I have read, and I found it very well done. This novel, while usually credited as the first science fiction novel by a black author, is definitely on the literary side, with a lot going on thematically. This is a heavy book, emotionally, but it also feels very rewarding. There is a reason this is a classic, and I would definitely recommend it.
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