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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.

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Craven, Miles
Miles Craven is my penname, an amalgam of the name I was born with (Michael Craven) and the name that replaced it (Michael Miles) when my mother remarried. A Yorkshireman living with my family in North Wales, Blackness in White is my eighth novel.

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