I went into this book essentially blind and became very pleasantly surprised. It centers around a black woman, Dana, from the 1970s who several times gets transported back in time to a farm in the antebellum south. It is written as a memoir, and its strength lies in re-living the slavery on such a farm from the eyes of a (at the time of writing) modern woman.

Olivia does a mostly excellent job portraying the characters in the story. Even though the white masters on the farm are cruel, they are still portrayed as humans. The fact that you can sympathize with almost all actions carried out by any of the characters, it one of the largest praises I can give a book of this kind. When in the past, there is obviously a clash between the black and whites, but also within each of the factions. Furthermore, Olivia was clever in giving the Dana a white husband, which time travels with her on some occasions, which enables her to explore even more nuances of that world.

For me, my least favorite part about the book was the time-traveling. It served a very important purpose in transporting Dana back and forth between the two worlds. However, as with most works utilizing time-traveling, I found myself questioning the details of it. The book leaves it mystical and unexplained, only following some loose rules, which is a good solution. This weakness was particularly apparent for me at the beginning and end of the book, where there were the most focus on this mechanism.

As I've stated, I really enjoyed this book. It gave a realistic view of humans during the period of american slavery, portraying them all as a mix of good and bad.