Women’s Press, 1988, 260 p.

I picked this up from a bundle of SF books for which a friend who also reviews the genre wanted to find a new home. I had my suspicions that I had read it before,* but on going through the prologue I realised I certainly had. No matter. It was worth reading again. And now I have a copy for my own shelves.

Dana Franklin is a black woman married to a white man, Kevin, in 1970s California. One day, in their new apartment she begins to feel dizzy. When that wears off she comes to realise she is outside, by a river and hearing the screams of a child, drowning. Of course she rushes to help. The child is Rufus Weylin and it eventually turns out there is a link between them such that when Rufus is in danger it pulls her back in time to protect him. Saving Rufus’s life does not save her from the suspicion of his father Tom who points a gun at her and pulls the trigger. She instantly finds herself back in her present, with Kevin, and only a few seconds having elapsed.

A few hours later the same thing happens again – only this time Rufus is older and has set his bedroom curtains on fire. Dana puts them out. In their ensuing conversation she discovers he lives in the year eighteen fifteen, on a Southern plantation which his father owns. She is shocked by his use of the word ‘nigger’ (common of course in his circles at that time) and explains to Rufus that where she comes from it is not acceptable. He struggles with that concept.

Rufus’s surname brings to her the memory of a bible her great-great grandmother had bought in which was inscribed “Hagar Weylin, born 1831, parents Rufus Weylin and Alice Greenwood Weylin” plus the family tree from then on, and she realises she has to in some way make sure that Rufus can survive long enough to sire Hagar. Dana’s most immediate problem is how to survive as a black woman in that place and era.

Cue several zig-zags back and forth in time on one of which Kevin is brought along with her only for him to be stranded in the past when she is catapulted to the future again. During these the relationships between Dana and the people on the plantation grow and develop but Rufus comes increasingly to behave as a man of his time.

Of the indignities suffered by black people in the slave-owning South Butler spares Dana only rape (and that only just, since the incident triggers one of her return journeys) but the relentlessness of the oppression is perhaps difficult to convey fully in a piece of fiction. Then too, Dana’s special position as a guarantor of Rufus’s safety in part insulates her from its full force – as does her assigned status as Kevin’s property when he is there with her (which even so does not save her from a whipping.) The inhumanity and brutality of the system, the way it effectively policed itself, the helplessness slaves experienced and even the resentments between them at any perceived advantage another may have had are all given witness.

This is not a comfortable read. But it is not meant to be. Nor should it. We ought to be constantly reminded of what it means, of where it can lead, when any section of the populace is singled out for uncaring or harsh treatment.

Pedant’s corner:- “started to drawn again” (to drown again,) surprsied (surprised,) straring (staring.) “I lat flat” (lay flat.)

*It turns out it was as recently as in 2017! From when I was trying to support our local Library (since closed) which explains why I couldn’t find it on my shelves.

headline, 2014, 320 p. First published 1979.

The novel is narrated by Dana Franklin, a black woman who lives in California in 1976 with her white husband, Kevin. One day she has a dizzy spell and comes to herself in a strange environment and just in time to save a young white boy, Rufus, from drowning. Threatened with a gun by the boy’s father, in fear of death, she is as suddenly returned to her 1976 home. She barely has time to wash herself before suffering another dizzy spell and is thrown back again to Rufus’s bedroom, where she puts out a fire. Rufus is older. His speech leads her to question him and she discovers she is in Maryland in 1815 or so, on a slave plantation and works out Rufus is her ancestor, yet to beget her great grandmother. There is no mechanism given for Dana’s ability to travel in time, it just happens. The only connection seems to be the genetic one. This makes this aspect of the novel fantasy rather than Science Fiction.

There are several more instances of journeys back and forth through time, on one occasion Dana is accompanied by Kevin as he is holding on to her at the time. They are separated when Dana is drawn back home after being whipped for teaching a slave to read. On her next return they meet up again but Kevin has spent five years in the past while only days have passed for Dana.

The set-up allows Butler the opportunity to portray the life of slaves and the attitudes of slaveholders in some detail. Quite how close that is to the real experience is a good question. Words on a page cannot truly convey the experience of being whipped, for example. The whole truth may well have been too incompatible with readability though, a delicate balance for the author to achieve. The compromises and accommodations the slaves have to make simply to survive, the jealousies, hierarchies and resentments among them are well delineated though.

The book of course is a commentary on how the past history of the US still has resonance – even now, almost forty years after the book was first published – the victimisation of women, sexual dynamics, and race as a construct.

Butler’s characterisation is excellent but the episodic nature of Dana’s encounters with Rufus – she is only drawn back to his time when his life is in danger – means his development into a typical slave-holder is also disjointed. His attraction to Alice Greenwood is problematic, though. While it is necessary for the story to work logically his initial scruples over forcing himself on her (even after her enslavement) seem a touch unlikely.

History is a complicated web. Family history perhaps more so. Butler reminds us that in the US it is also contentious.

Pedant’s corner:- apart from being written in USian there were – remarkably – only two things I noted: insure (ensure; do USians employ insure in this sense?) hung (hanged; but it was in dialogue.)