The Potato Factory: Bryce Courtenay

Book I of The Potato Factory. Ikey Solomon, The Prince of Fences, is a nocturnal creature - brilliant, ruthless, unctuous and quick-witted. Hannah, his brothel-mistress wife, is rapacious, sharp-tongued, amoral and dearly loathes her husband - but dearly loves her children. Mary Abacus, Ikey's sometime-mistress who was born in St. Giles, London's vilest rookery, has somehow survived a young life of distress and misadventure but is gifted with a knowledge of numbers and the determination that one day, she will succeed. All three are transported as criminals to Van Diemen's Land , where the two strong and determined women raise separate families, each with the surname Solomon, the one legitimate and the other not. The destinies of both families are irrevocably locked into Ikey's greed, Hannah's haste and Mary's ambition - a potent combination that - when love is added - becomes a vengeful and explosive mixture as each woman sets out to destroy the other.