Aoife Ni Coillte is the eldest daughter of an Irish Indentured family, living in a poor village near the estate of Tanglewood Manor. In love with George Oliver Williams, the eldest son of the wealthy Williams family to whom the manor belongs, Aoife is rejected as an unsuitable match in favour of the heiress, Dido Dubois. Pride and bigotry drive her to unkindness towards Dido's younger sister, Bellouise, until one fateful evening, when she is jointly punished by the African ancestral spirit, Belloko, and Pouq, the Irish phantom faerie. Transformed into the monstrous Steel Donkey, Aoife is condemned to haunt and terrorise the area, until she can learn to love that which she hates.
Ten years later, the Williams family hires John Jack, a discerning and kind freed slave to help maintain the family property. An unlikely bond takes root between Aoife and John, followed by rumours of Steel Donkey sightings spreading like bushfire across the hills.
Tanglewood
is a postcolonial gothic romance, set in a fictional 1840s Barbados, that explores the isolation of the Irish Indentured, and a unique origin story for the local folkloric legend of the Steel Donkey.