CHAINS OF TIME

An African American family with special powers battles a seemingly immortal White slave trader for over a century in this debut novel.

Terry Kelly is a 15-year-old African American teenager in Harlem. In some ways, he’s a typical teen, enduring a school bully and a father, Carl, who doesn’t treat him as favorably as his football-playing older brother, Jerome. But Terry, along with other family members, has a special ability. Regina, the youngest, who hasn’t spoken in two years, communicates with Terry telepathically, and he realizes he has a power he can use against the bully. In a concurrent narrative, starting 150 years earlier in 1860, Amara, an African woman, has a precognitive ability. She sees Hendrik Van Owen, an evil White man, force her and others into slavery on her wedding day, which she and her family sadly cannot prevent. In America, Amara is a slave on Van Owen’s tobacco farm until she runs away. But Van Owen, who has somehow acquired the same powers she and her fiance hone, obsessively pursues her, convinced she’s entirely his. As years turn into decades, he goes after Amara and her growing family, ultimately involving the Kellys in the present day. While Woodstone profoundly addresses modern African American struggles, the tale is equally dynamic in the supernatural and historical genres. Amara, for example, foresees and lives through the Civil War. Characters’ abilities, which aren’t immediately known, are often surprising. Mystery also plays a part in character development, from why Regina doesn’t speak to why Carl blames his oldest son, Warren, for the death of the family’s matriarch, Dara. Permeating the story are potent messages, both on the surface (“No African born in America can ever truly know freedom”) and inferred (pale, white-haired Van Owen, like the hatred he harbors, will not die easily). Despite several supernatural confrontations, violence is relatively muffled.

A perceptive and gripping tale of race and family.