Kindred
Dana, a Black writer in 1976 Los Angeles, is yanked across time again and again to an early nineteenth-century Maryland plantation where she is enslaved alongside her own ancestors, summoned each time a white boy named Rufus is in mortal danger. Unable to choose when she arrives or when she leaves, she measures her life in days at home and weeks or months on the plantation, while her white husband Kevin is pulled in and stranded with her. Octavia Butler uses the apparatus of time travel to force her readers and her heroine out of the abstractions of history and into the daily calculus of survival under slavery.
Where Kindred keeps showing up
Three of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Also by Octavia Butler
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A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about Kindred
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On her twenty-sixth birthday in 1976, Dana Franklin is yanked from her Los Angeles apartment to a Maryland plantation in 1815. She has been called there to save the life of a white child who, decades later, will own her.
No. Kindred (1979) was Octavia Butler's fourth published novel, after the Patternist series. It is her best-known book and remains widely taught in American literature, history, and African American studies courses.
Yes. FX produced an eight-episode Kindred adaptation in 2022. The show was cancelled after one season but is widely considered a thoughtful, faithful interpretation of the novel's premise.
Kindred was written by Octavia Butler, published in 1979 by Morro Branco.
Kindred is 287 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Kindred takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Kindred is a standalone novel by Octavia Butler, not part of a series.
Kindred is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
