Kindred (1979) is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. It is still widely popular. It has been frequently chosen as a text for community-wide reading programs and book organizations, as well as being chosen for high school and college courses. The book is the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 with her white husband and an early 19th century Maryland plantation. There she meets some of her ancestors: a proud free Black woman and a white planter who forces her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana's stays in the past become longer, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. Dana makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time. Kindred explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century Black woman, who is aware of its legacy in contemporary American society. Through the two interracial couples who form the emotional core of the story, the novel also explores the intersection of power, gender, and race issues, and speculates on the prospects of future egalitarianism. While most of Butler's work is classified as science fiction, Kindred is thought to cross genre boundaries, being classified also as African-American literature. Butler has categorized the work as "a kind of grim fantasy." Plot Kindred scholars have noted that the novel's chapter headings suggest something "elemental, apocalyptic, archetypal about the events in the narrative," thus giving the impression that the main characters are participating in matters greater than their personal experiences. Prologue Dana, a young black woman, wakes up in the hospital with her arm amputated. Police deputies question her about the circumstances and ask her whether her husband Kevin, a white man, beats her. Dana tells them that it was an accident and that Kevin is not to blame. When Kevin visits her, they acknowledge being afraid to tell the truth because they know nobody would believe them. The River Their lives were altered on June 9, 1976, the day of Dana's twenty-sixth birthday, in the year the United States was celebrating its bicentennial. The day before, Dana and Kevin had moved into a house a few miles away from their old apartment in Los Angeles. While unpacking, Dana suddenly became dizzy.