The Hetherington Women Part 1

Set in nineteenth century America and spanning the Northern and Southern States, this is the story of five women whose lives become inextricably linked by their association with one man, Gilbert Hetherington, a violent bully, for whom each of them harbours the most bitter hatred: his sister Lilybee; his wife Celia; his daughter Rosalind; Grace, the young black slave whom he rapes whilst visiting his sister's cotton plantation, and Minnie, the child she bears after his brutal attack.

A story of love and hatred, murder and revenge, it portrays a broad tapestry of life in America both before and throughout the horror of the Civil War. It is colourfully interwoven with the characters of English gentry living privileged lives on a cotton plantation in North Carolina, the black slaves they use to accumulate their wealth, poor Irish immigrants in New York, who have tragically fled the potato famine in Ireland, hoping for a better life in the New World, and the Lenape Delaware Indians of New Jersey, who are cruelly exploited by the unscrupulous Indian Agents with whom they trade their goods.