In a time when women are expected to know their place, this tale of desire and surrender is steeped in the sweet romance and the ruthless brutality of an uncivilized time.

With her parents gone, Hannah Crowe feels responsible for her post-adolescent siblings. Life would be much easier if her brother Beau and sister Jolie were not always getting into trouble, causing conflict between Hannah and husband, Daniel. His prescription for these misdemeanors is a turn in the woodshed, strap in hand. In the latest scuffle, Daniel gives the reckless Jolie over to Judge Boone, whose courthouse discipline sees the young maid half stripped before an audience and punished with a tawse. But when Hannah attempts to rescue Beau—against Daniel’s wishes—it’s Hannah who’s off to the woodshed, later serving time naked in the yard, tethered to a post. Extreme? Maybe. But the infuriated Daniel refuses to back down.

When Beau’s bad debts to a unscrupulous swindler, Jarrett Cain, mount, it’s Hannah being harassed. She cringes at his sleazy insinuations, but she doesn’t dare tell Daniel. Jarrett and his boys soon show up at the farmhouse while Daniel’s away, with plans to take their payment in sex from both Hannah and Jolie. When Hannah resists, both women are forced against the kitchen table and soundly whipped; then while Jolie watches in horror, her sister is anally raped. Believing she has betrayed her husband, Hannah is shamed beyond belief and again refuses to tell her husband. She makes Jolie swear to keep the awful secret.

Days later, Hannah is kidnapped and taken to Cain’s ranch, where she’s displayed, tormented and humiliated in the pony ring, then is the victim of a gang rape by Jarrett and his men. Though deploring the vile things these men do, a strange sexual satisfaction brews in her when she’s so unmercifully used. Could it be she finds a depraved satisfaction in these obscene sexual acts?