A graphic novel adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
A young black woman finds herself magically transported back in time to the days of southern plantations and slavery, summoned to save the young life of her distant ancestor.
Dana and her husband had just moved into a new place when she felt dizzy and abruptly found herself on a riverbank, arriving just in time to rescue a little boy who was drowning. The boy was Rufus, the son of the man who owned the plantation and Dana's great-something grandfather. As Rufus told her later, as he was drowning he had a vision of Dana and somehow called her to him and to his time, 1810.
Time and again Rufus would call Dana back to the past and she was forced to experience the terrible reality of being a black person in the time of slavery, even to the point of enduring a whipping and being forced to work in the fields. And even though she tries her best to educate Rufus, his white privilege and selfishness prevents him from taking it to heart and he, when he is grown, he forces himself on the woman who would become Dana's great-something grandmother. But once the child of that rape is born, Dana's ancestor, Dana is at last free to end Rufus' domination over her life and return to the future where she belongs.
What the author wants to do here is look at the life and hardships of a slave from the view point of a modern educated woman and she uses the gimmick of time travel to achieve that end.
This is a depressing story and brings home the terrible tragedy of slavery in all of its cruelty, selfishness and ignorance. It's a disturbing read and lays bare one of the ugly truths of America's past.
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