Octavia Butler's postmodern science fiction slave narrative Kindred could be considered, in part, a love story, but I don't think that is the primary focus of the novel.
In the most traditional sense, a love story would describe the development of a romantic relationship between main characters. At the start of the novel, Dana and Kevin are already married, and I'm not even sure I'd call Kevin a true main character. Yes, there are some indications in the novel that Dana and Kevin's love story is one that overcame racism and prejudice and proves that love and similar interests can overcome racial divides. Kevin is certainly supportive of Dana as she comes and goes from the antebellum South in her time travels, until the end of the novel, experiencing the brutality of slavery on her own without her husband experiencing or even witnessing her struggles. When Kevin does go...
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to the past with her, he is, of course, considered a powerful man since he is white, and he occupies a much different social position from his wife, even though in their "real lives" in 1976, they think of one another as equals. The trauma of the time travels does not tear apart their relationship, and their marriage survives at the end of the novel.
In a less traditional sense, the novel could be considered a sort of love story in the sense that Dana learns about her ancestors, meets them, and grows to love some of them (not Rufus, though she has a very complex relationship with him). She develops a deeper appreciation for and kinship with her slave ancestors through the novel. Kindred is more about Dana's discovery of her past and her struggle to reconcile her current life with the life of her predecessors.
Dana feels like an outsider because she is different from everyone that's because she is a contemporary women who happens to be living in the past. She feels alienated. This alienation leads her to identify with Rufus. She says, "What we had was something new, something that didn't even have a name. Some matching strangeness in us that may or may not have come from being related." On a more romantic note, her relationship with Kevin is also built on a shared feeling of not fitting in or feeling alienated.
When she meets Kevin, Dana thinks of him, "was as lonely and out of place as I was." After becoming closer to him she realizes that he is... "like me— a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying."
When Dana and Kevin come back home, their feelings of alienation make them feel a shared connection. "It was easy for us to be together, knowing we shared experiences no one else would believe."
This is a kind of love story.