Dana (Edana) Franklin

Dana (Edana) Franklin is a brave, sympathetic, and individualistic twenty-six-year-old African-American woman. She is a main character and narrator of a novel by American writer. Dana’s husband is Kevin who works as a writer. They have just obtained their first house and are happy together. Dana Franklin gets pulled back in time to Antebellum Maryland to save the life of her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin. At the plantation, she must learn to make a painful agreement in order to keep body and soul together as a slave to protect her existence in a free modern life.

So she grapples between the connections she has made with partner slaves on the Weylin plantation, such as Nigel and Sara. Her sisterhood with the coerced Alice, and her genetic relationship with Rufus as she tries to bear in the past with as little harm as desirable to herself and others. As Butler handles with issues of power and authority, she demonstrates in the bonds between Dana and Rufus the complete harmony among slaves and their owner. In the end, she loses her left arm in her final trip to the past, carrying a personal warning of the burden that many offspring of slaves deliver from this family history.