Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Exposition (Initial Situation)
Why Am I Going Back in Time?
Our narrator Dana opens the book by saying that her arm was crushed on her "last trip home." It's only a few pages later that we find out Dana has been travelling back in time to visit her ancestor, a white slave-owner named Rufus Weylin. Dana visits Rufus at first when he's just a little boy, and she realizes that she only travels back in time at moments when she needs to save his life. Dana doesn't necessarily want to save someone who'll grow up to be a white slave-owner. But, then again, Rufus is her ancestor and she needs to keep him alive until he has kids if she plans on ever being born herself.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
To Kill Or Not To Kill
By the time Rufus Weylin has grown up, he's given Dana a lot of reasons to let him die. For starters, he sends Dana to work in the cornfields and has her whipped when she talks back to him. Plus he asks for her help in raping another slave named Alice. The tension builds as Rufus grows older and settles into his role as a white slave owner. Dana hoped that she could raise him to be a nice person, but it looks like she failed. Now something's gotta give.
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)
Comeuppance Time
Eventually, Rufus' cruelty gets so bad that he lies to his slave Alice about selling her children to a slave trader. He's only saying this to show Alice who's boss, but Alice takes the news so hard that she hangs herself. Even after she's dead, Rufus blames her for what has happened. He says that things never would have gotten so out of hand if Alice had just done as he said. When this is all over, Dana finds Rufus hanging out in his library. He tries to grab her and rape her and Dana decides she's had enough. She grabs a knife and stabs Rufus to death.
Falling Action
Fire Sale
Dana returns to her home in 1976 only to have her arm crushed inside one of the walls of her house. You'll probably remember this incident as the opening scene of the novel. After she gets out of the hospital, she and her husband Kevin take a trip to Maryland to visit the site of the old Weylin plantation. They learn from an old newspaper article that the house burned down on the day Dana killed Rufus. Dana realizes that a slave named Nigel must have burned the place down in order to conceal her crime. And it looks like he did a really good job of it.
Resolution (Denouement)
Go Find Remorse Someplace Else
Dana and Kevin end the book by agreeing that they're glad Rufus Weylin is dead. Some of us might still have some sympathy for Rufus, but the book sure doesn't. It chooses this moment to remind us that there are many other people in this world who deserve sympathy more than a guy like Rufus. Being delusional is not an excuse for being violent and racist.