What’s the difference between Deborah and Esther?

Deborah is a long-suffering and gentle woman who cannot bear children. Raped by a group of white men when she was a young girl, Deborah was an object of scorn and fear to the community. Much older than Gabriel, she agreed to marry him when he asked her after he realized how much she had prayed for him and looked after him. Gabriel has an affair with Esther.

Esther is more fiesty and spirited than Deborah. The affair only lasted for nine days before he ended it, but Esther came to him weeks later and told him she was pregnant. When Gabriel refused to leave Deborah and marry her, Esther decided not to blackmail him with public disclosure of her pregnancy. Showing a religious fervor that he could never get her to feel with his preaching, she said, "I shamed before my God-to make somebody make me cheap, like you done." She moved North with money Gabriel gave her and died while giving birth to Royal.