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.