The Mayor of Casterbridge

A farmhand makes the impulsive, drunken decision to sell his wife and child to the highest bidder, but soon lives to regret it, vowing to give up alcohol and become a wealthy, powerful man. Twenty-one years on, he has done just that, taking up office as the Mayor of Casterbridge - only for his life to be turned upside down by the reappearance of the wife and daughter he sold years before.