Blackness in White

It is 1778 in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Sixteen-year-old Nell Cooper is doted on by her baronet father Sir Patrick a man acutely status conscious and highly susceptible of slights. He is a rich West India planter who brings home from Barbados a slave girl Olu as a ‘pet’ for his daughter. The two girls are uneasy companions each in their own way strong and defiant. Nell through whose eyes the story is told expects Olu to be a grateful submissive slave happy with her lot but as she quickly discovers this is far from being the case. Yet in spite of everything the two girls grow close a development not lost on Sir Patrick who starts to regret bringing Olu home. Soon the baronet is having the pair watched using as a spy his evil steward and attorney Archibald Vine.