The Prologue
This is where Dana is when the novel begins.
What is a hospital?
Dana is transported to the past because a child faces this danger.
What is drowning in a river?
These burning objects summon Dana to Rufus's bedroom.
What are the bedroom curtains?
Rufus suffers this injury after falling from a tree.
What is a broken leg?
Dana and Kevin share this career goal in 1976.
What is becoming a writer?
Dana has suffered this permanent injury.
What is the loss of her left arm?
Dana does these two things to save Rufus.
What are pulling him from the water and reviving him with artificial respiration?
Rufus says he started the fire for this reason.
What is revenge after his father beat him for stealing a dollar?
Kevin travels to 1819 with Dana because he is doing this when the time travel begins.
What is holding Dana?
This relationship makes Kevin's presence in 1819 especially dangerous and difficult to explain.
What is his interracial marriage to Dana?
The police question this person because Dana's injury has no believable explanation.
Who is Kevin Franklin?
Rufus's mother strikes Dana because she makes this mistake.
What is mistaking Dana's rescue efforts for an attack on Rufus?
Hearing Alice Greenwood's name causes Dana to make this important discovery.
What is that Alice and Rufus appear in the family records connected to Dana's ancestry?
Dana and Kevin use this cover story to protect Dana from suspicion.
What is the claim that Kevin owns Dana?
The sale of three of Sarah's children demonstrates this power of slavery.
What is the power to separate enslaved families?
Dana and Kevin cannot tell the police the truth for this reason.
What is that the truth about time travel and Dana's injury sounds impossible?
This frightening action sends Dana back to 1976.
What is a white man pointing a rifle at her?
The violence at Alice's home teaches Dana this lesson about freedom in antebellum Maryland.
What is that free Black people and their families remain vulnerable to white violence and control?
Teaching Nigel to read is dangerous because literacy threatens this.
What is the plantation's control over enslaved people?
Dana repeatedly protects Rufus because his survival is connected to this part of her identity.
What are her family ancestry and her own future existence?
Beginning with Dana's unexplained injury creates this effect for readers.
What is suspense about how Dana was injured?
These two kinds of fear control Dana's movement through time.
What are Rufus's fear of death calling Dana to him and Dana's fear of death sending her home?
This attack causes Dana to fear for her life and return to 1976.
What is a patroller's attack on Dana?
This violent event sends Dana home without Kevin at the end of the chapter.
What is Tom Weylin whipping Dana after discovering the secret reading lesson?
Rufus receives books and tutors while Nigel risks punishment to learn, revealing this inequality.
What is unequal access to education based on race and legal status?