Octavia Butler's "Kindred"

In Kindred, the reader never discovers how Dana is actually transported back in time. The question then becomes: is this important? As much as I wanted to know how Dana went back, and hoping beyond hope for some really cool, even logical explanation, I'm not surprised that Butler did not include it. Therefore, to answer my own question, I say no, it's not important. The real story lies in Dana's ability to adjust to the slave way of life, which could have been far worse had she ended up on a different plantation further south in another state other than Maryland. The novel suggests that even a modern woman could not hold her own in that time period, and this is mostly true only because Dana must practice restraint in order to preserve her heritage. In a wierd way, Kindred reminds me of the scene in Back to the Future where Marty's siblings begin to diasapper from a photograph because Marty McFly's own time travel has altered the course of time. I kept imagining Dana the same way, slowly fading away into oblivion and alterting the course of history as she disrupted the normal sequence of events. Of course, she did lose an arm...