Care about animals? Beware of this book. One plot features the torture, persecution and killing of an old, partially blind cat.I read several editorial reviews and none mentioned this. From them, I expected a challenging read. I was interested in the women, their emotional lives, and how they coped with their families and their social and political environments.I generally give a book a fifty page trial. With this book, I decided at that point not to continue with it. The violence toward the cat was introduced and I knew this was not a good book for me. But, I read the last few pages. (Probably hoping I was wrong and that the outcome for the cat, anyway, was good.) Mistake!The one star rating is the mimimum accepted by Amazon. I would rate this heartless book in the negatives for the negative impact it had on me.