Oh boy was this a good book! My latest read is exactly what fascinates me - pictures of the past through time travel. I know that sounds weird and science-fictiony (and it is a science fiction book but it doesn't reads as typical Sci-fi) but the author does a great job at NOT making this hokey So this book was written in 1979. It's about a bi-racial couple (Dana is black, her husband Kevin is white) living in Pasadena (1976) who are just settling in to married life when she is suddenly transported back to Maryland (a slave state) in 1815. She is to be transported back and forth through time and space 6 times in order to save her great-great grandfather from harm. (I only mentioned her husband as a white man because he, at one point, travels with her accidentally and is forced to pretend to be her "master" in the 1800s). Interestingly, the time difference between the two worlds varies and while she might be living in the 1800s for months (and at different ages of her grandfather), only minutes (at most a day) go by in her modern world. So interesting.
The unbelievable parts of this novel are not the time travel. Instead, the reader, or at least I was floored and disgusted and bewildered by the descriptions of how the slaves were treated. Bought and sold without regard to family, children or life. Beaten and raped without the care or knowledge of these people actually being people. They were considered property and as such, owners could and did whatever they wanted with these individuals. Crazy.
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