Octavia Butler is best known as a science fiction writer—one of the few African American women science fiction writers, and the first science fiction writer to receive a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation. However, she has written at least one book which combines historical fiction with time travel.

Kindred was a best-seller when it was first published in 1979, and is still taught in schools and colleges today. I can easily understand why. It is an absolutely gripping novel: engaging characters and plenty of action and suspense, as well as thought-provoking situations that lend themselves to classroom discussion. I could not put it down, and finished it in two days.

Kindred begins in 1976, with an African-American woman, Dana, and her white husband, Kevin, unpacking in their new apartment near Los Angeles. Suddenly, Dana finds herself transported to the bank of a river where a white boy is drowning. She saves his life, and then returns home to her California apartment just as suddenly. She doesn’t know where she’s been, or who she has just saved. However, this becomes clear on her second sudden trip, when she is called to save the same boy, Rufus, now a few years older, from a fire he started. Upon questioning the boy, she finds out that she is in Maryland and the year is 1815. When Rufus reveals his full name, she recognizes him as one of her own ancestors.

It turns out that Rufus somehow has the ability to call Dana back to him whenever he’s in a life-threatening situation. However, each trip for her grows longer and more dangerous. Rufus is the son of a slave-owner, and each time she visits, Dana is in danger of being enslaved herself. During her third trip, Kevin tries to prevent her from being transported by grabbing onto her, and he is also transported with her.

Most of the novel takes place in the early 1800’s, with only brief interludes in 1976, so it is more of a historical novel than a science fiction novel. The time travel is the only science fiction device used in the novel, and there are no machines or other technology to make it happen. It just happens.

In a 1997 interview in Callaloo magazine Butler said the idea for Kindred came to her in college, when she heard a young man, part of the Black Power Movement, blame his ancestors for submitting to cruel and humiliating treatment. Butler realized that this man, and perhaps other young adults like him, didn’t understand that he wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the endurance his ancestors exhibited under extreme stress. Butler uses Kindred as a way of exploring how slavery changed both white people and black people. How does a slave-owner develop from an innocent child? Why might a black person choose to endure mistreatment rather than to fight back or try to escape? How might a modern African American cope with a life of slavery?

Kindred is truly a classic work of historical fiction, science fiction, African American literature, and literature in general. I just found out that a Kindred graphic novel adaptation will be released in 2017, so this wonderful novel should find new readers!