Cold Comfort Farm is the story of Flora Poste, a bright young thing who finds herself forced to live with her relatives in the countryside. On arrival, she finds the farm in rack and ruin, being destroyed by the doomed Starkadders: Amos, preaching hellfire and damnation, Cousin Judith, racked with remorse and desperately seeking redemption in the tea leaves, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben. With a host of comic characters and some very sad cows, Cold Comfort Farm is a witty and merciless parody of rural melodramas.