The Ewe Lamb

Judith Delaney and Alice Dowerthwaite have that rare thing: a friendship which survives their different life styles and aspirations.At school together in the Yorkshire Dales, their paths suddenly divide when Judith leaves to go and live with her father, an academic lawyer. She grows up to be ambitious and struggles, against male prejudice, to carve out a career for herself in the legal profession.Alice, a farmer's daughter, grows up to accept her role of helping on the farm which, her father being a sick man, is run by her mother and three brothers. Her life is restricted, for the Dowerthwaites are a gloomy and unfriendly lot, rarely leaving their remote farm even to go to the village. Shut off and private, they manage their life in their own way, unaffected by the ways of the outside world. So when a dreadful crime is committed against one of them, they don't seek help from the police, they take the law into their own hands themselves deal out rough justice to the culprit.Meanwhile, Judith has become a barrister in London. Not many briefs come her way at first but when they do she becomes increasingly incensed by the conductor of rape trials in which the victim is subjected to what seems a second rape by the defence lawyer whose only way of getting his client off is by undermining and humiliating the woman in the witness box.Judith's way of life could not be more different from that of her childhood friend. Yet though their life styles may be different, they have each developed strengths of their own and when disaster strikes they are able to help each other in a way which nobody else can.