The Bareilly Ace

Set in Victorian times, 'The Bareilly Ace' opens shortly before a tragic massacre in ‘The Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 and follows the life of a small girl, Sue, who becomes the only survivor. Due to widespread unrest in northern India, with her adoptive parents George and Frances, they return to England, but eventually settle in Blaenavon, an iron-ore smelting town in South Wales, where George takes up a post as magistrate. The story revolves round Sue and her uncommon abilities, drive and determination to succeed and do well, against a backdrop of well-to-do Victorian society that expects women just to be accomplished at needlework and marry to raise children. Encouraged by the jovial and flippant local church minister 'Good Evans', as a late teenager Sue establishes a cottage hospital in Blaenavon to lovingly provide basic health-care for the blast furnace workers and their families who suffer terribly. Throughout the story, serious social issues are interwoven with amusing situations and narrative revealing the daily trials and tribulations of industrial life in the Valleys. On a sabbatical, Sue unexpectedly falls in love with Benjamin, a young Cavalry officer with whom she shares an overwhelming love of India. On returning to India, Sue soon becomes settled, and the drama unfolds with her helping to develop a women’s medical ministry in Bareilly together with Dr. Clara Swain the first (real life) woman doctor missionary to India. Together they develop much needed medical services to alleviate poverty, and the injustice that women were not allowed to visit a male doctor. Sue meets a colleague who is famous for campaigning for the rights of women and who has no qualms about telling senior clergy what they should preach on social issues. A fateful trip to the temples of Khajuraho to view the revealing statues and carvings, a romantic courtship, a wedding and a tortuous set of circumstances lead to an inheritance. However, lawyers arrive to contest it, uncovering a surprising twist about her husband’s past. Sue sets about concocting and compiling evidence in defence of her honour and her marriage.