This grim novel is set in the salt marshes on the east cost of Essex. In that strange region where superstition is rife, the sadistic and passionate Elijah Rebow falls in love with the fiery gipsy-beauty Mehalah, though she is caught up in her own love affair, and vows to make her his wife. Mehalah is a powerful study of primitive characters, never agreeable, but always absorbing. Its strength is in the skill with which the romancer environs his fierce human creatures with an equally untamable nature. Mehalah was one of Baring-Gould's first novels and created something of a sensation, being compared by many to Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and described by Truth as "a bit of real romance: original, violent, powerful, novel both in place and circumstance, and peculiarly impressive."