In The Cotton Queen, three generations of women struggle to come to grips with the cards life has dealt them during a period of significant social change in the United States of America.

The story moves around a small town in Texas and is narrated alternately by mother and daughter, giving us two fresh perspectives of the same events. These two women grow apart through the years only to be thrown back together by life’s ruthlessness and unpredictability. Having a different yet shared background, they are worlds apart in the way they envisage life and their stance in society.

Babs, a young widow, does her best to keep her daughter Laney close to her and support them both in a society that doesn’t make it easy for single working mothers. In trying to protect her daughter from the world’s bitterness she’s had to taste in mute despair while striving to succeed and be socially accepted, Babs ends up building around her a wall that no one can transpose.

Albeit tempting, it proves difficult to take exclusively Laney’s side knowing what has driven her mother to such miscalculated callousness. Nevertheless, you can’t help sympathising with the daughter while she strives to break free from what she regards as a prison and makes her own way through life like her mother has done.

The timeless mother-daughter conflict finds an outstanding expression in this absorbing family tale of strength, endurance and resourcefulness. Pamela Morsi weaves this double-threaded story with disarming mastery and nimble delicacy. Thoroughly riveting!