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Description - Hattie's Lot by Barry Geoffrey Baker

Hatties Lot tells the story of an intelligent London girl, Harriet Freestone born in the 1880s, the fourth child of eleven, whose military father abandons the family for another woman and to serve in the Indian Army. The novel moves between London, West Africa and Southern Africa. Hattie as a First World War secretary at the Admiralty, rubbing shoulders with the young Winston Churchill. Falling in love with an Ashanti Chief's student son Agyeman (Aggy), eight years her junior, after meeting at New Year in Trafalgar Square. Bearing his illegitimate son, then selling the child back to the Gold Coast and losing her disgraced lover forever. The support of her older sister Rose, faithful and constant. The 'sale' witnessed by unseen 'little Jack', Rose's son and Hattie's favourite relation. Hattie emigrates to Durban. She meets a hard up divorced businessman 'at the races', equally seeking a rich partner. They marry and find out the mutual shams, too late. Hattie gives birth to a daughter Elizabeth (Beth) and learns to live life through her. Returning to war blitz torn London shocks her, but does not deter Hattie from later returning to chaperon Beth through College.
Beth meets Niall, an Irish Doctor specialising in tropical medicine, at New Year in Trafalgar Square - they keep it secret from Hattie. Returning to South Africa, Beth continues an affair with a young black houseboy which began innocently when young children, but has no future under the apartheid regime. Hattie and Aggy's son Kwame, becomes an activist in the freedom movement for West African independence from British and French colonisation, whilst Aggy is a respected political leader. Kwame is murdered in a seamy port side drinking house in the presence of a female conspirator - a future mercenary terrorist, who is later to be present when Beth's then husband Niall, and their two young daughters are murdered in UDI ex-communicated Rhodesia. Now widowed, Hattie finds her 'pot of gold' at last, in the shape of an elderly Scottish born, Kimberley diamond mine owner, Many years her senior, he dies, leaving her a millionairess. Meanwhile back in the MUK, Rose, little Jack and other relations live in dread of the now domineering and arrogant Hattie returning home. Grief stricken daughter Beth, still in communication with her long time Zulu lover, lives on in the new Zimbabwe.
In Ghana, Kwame's daughter Primross, seeks to find the truth about her father's life and death, and his grand-daughter wins a place at Cambridge in England. At New Year in Trafalgar Square, this grand-daughter meets a white boy, coincidentally the grandson of Hattie's nephew, little Jack. Hattie dies in Stellenbosch, leaving her fortune to Beth, who has now moved back to Durban, with her companion. Beth dies intestate, with apparently no heir. Lawyers in Cape Town, London and Accra, investigate to find that the lives of the lovers - Hattie and Aggy have run parallel. Descendants on both sides stake their claims, but who will inherit?

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