According to the local wizard, Beguildy, the Sarns are a cursed family. When Prue is born with a hare-lip, it seems to confirm his view. While Prue is determined to shrug off the ‘defect’ of her hare-lip and educate herself, her brother Gideon is obsessed by material self-betterment and the pursuit of Beguildy’s beautiful daughter, Jancis. The rich saga that unfolds includes folklore, witchcraft, murders, and suicide, but is above all a story of love won and lost in the harsh and haunting world of this isolated 19th-century Shropshire community. Based on the book by Mary Webb.
The story is set shortly after the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) in the Georgian era.
Note: In 1957 the book was made into a six-part BBC television drama series starring Patrick Troughton and Daphne Slater. Under its French title ‘Sarn’, it was produced as a television play by French Television ORTF in 1968, with Dominique Labourier as Prue, Josep Maria Flotats as Gedeon and Pierre Vaneck as Kester; the director was Claude Santelli. In 1989 it was again adapted for British television by the BBC, directed by Christopher Menaul and starring Clive Owen and Janet McTeer and was shown on PBS Masterpiece. None of these versions appear to have been released on DVD but at the time of this writing the 1989 BBC version is available as a region free copy [here](http://stojo.com/PreciousBane.html).