Hester, a novel by Margaret Oliphant

Who would have guessed that such a good (and in Victorian times), such a well known author would come from the little East Lothian town of Wallyford? Margaret Oliphant is new to me, I only recently discovered her through researching the American painter Rembrandt Peale who painted the picture of the girl above and is on the cover of the book...

Hester is an unusual and gripping novel about a girl who grows up in Redborough, a small fictional English Midlands town in the late 1800s where the Vernon's Bank and it's owner Catherine Vernon is the centre of the social and economic life there.
Hester, the heroine of the novel dislikes Catherine, and is the only person in Redborough who is willing to stand up to her. She falls in love with Edward, who has been adopted by Catherine Vernon and though he outwardly bows and scrapes to his adopted mother, he secretly plans to escape the stifling confines of the town, of Catherine's bossiness and the dullness of running a small provincial bank.
He begins to speculate with the bank's money on the stock exchange, at the same time as he begins to woo Hester in a very odd and roundabout way.
The tension between the three main characters is very well done and it's never very clear which direction things are going. I haven't finished it yet, but it's pretty exciting as Edward (and Hester) grow increasingly desperate to leave and start a new life together, but things keep pulling them back to Redborough,

12 Years A Slave

Went to the cinema for the first time in a while - and boy, it was powerful! The plot in summary is that a free black man living in the Northern States of America is abducted and taken south to work on cotton and sugar plantations. All the historical accuracy you could hope for is there, including the slightly stilted way of speaking. But what sets this apart from other "historical" or period dramas is not only the level of brutality depicted, but the casualness with which the violence inflicted on the slaves is met with both by the other slaves and by their owners.

It's not for the faint-hearted, but it does have a happy ending and is well worth seeing...