Kindred is about a woman who is thrust into an environment that is actively trying to harm her, but gives her an opportunity to, quite literally, rewrite her family history. Its main character, Dana, is a smart and satisfying protagonist, even so, I would not call this an 'empowering' story. It is about something more subtle than that- the pain and poetry of cooperation, of people working together, not because they want to, but because they must.

Dana's tentative relationship with her odd, unethical ancestor, Rufus, brings this to the forefront of our attention.

Those who know very little about slavery in the United States will find the events in this book shocking and grotesque. Yes, it really was that bad, and often much worse.

Butler uses plain language to craft this world, language that both accomplishes the purpose of appealing to a broad audience and is also somewhat ineffective at conveying slavery and her narrative in all of their 3D horror and glory. Put simply, I found Butler's prose style a bit one - dimensional - a bit too much so to fully rise to the occasion that the novel called for.

Kindred is an unusual book, a memorable book, and a powerful one. But the writing was, at times, too simple and too minimalist for its own good.

As Dana strains to find the humanity in her ancestor, seeing only brief glimpses, so does the reader strain for the reward of the protagonist - what does she get in the end, as compensation, for enduring all of this? If she can be compensated? What's the positive reinforcement? We find little, at least, in the places where we know where to look. Dana is not a hero. No days are saved, for her or for anyone else. She arrives home bloodied, but is a force to be reckoned with in taking history into her own hands.

Kindred will stay with you for a long time. It certainly will for me.