Synopsis: Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After the first summons, Dana is drawn back again and again to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Yet each time the stays grow longer and more dnagerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has even begun. Review: In my quest to "broaden my reading horizons", I decided to pick up this book from my local library. I'm a very picky reader and while I finish every book I start, some books are easier to get into than others. Kindred is a perfect example of a book that had me hooked bye page 3 and I had finished it in 8 hours! The book starts out with Dana, our heroine, in the hospital after losing her arm. No explanation is given in full and you hope that it'll be explained by the end, but it pulls you in and makes you wonder how the poor girl got to that point. Fortunately for me, the author does not spend time on the "how" of the whole time/distance travel her main character goes through. I don't know how many books on time travel I've read that focus on that and it bores me. I don't care about the science behind it, just get on with the story! The heroine Dana is a very likable person. You can relate to her in some many ways, even if you're not a young black woman. She has issues and struggles as we all do. The people she travels back in time and meets are the kind of people you'd hate and that is done purposely by the author I believe. They are racist, simple-minded, bigoted.. need I go on? You wonder why Dana risks her life to save her ancestor over and over again, but then the big picture is revealed as to why these awful people must survive. I won't tell you why, but the fate of more than just Dana's life sits in her hands and she must do things so that others may live. This book is definitely a book to keep and read over and over again.
Title: Kindred |
2/1/05
