Hestia (novel)
Hestia is a 1979 science fiction novel by American writer C. J. Cherryh. It is an early novel in her career, about colonists on an alien world and their interactions with the catlike natives, centering on a young engineer sent to solve the colonists' problems, and his relationship with the young native cat-woman in scanty clothing on the cover. Major themes in this novel are the perpetuation of conflicts through mistrust and revenge, personal responsibility, and conflicts between ethics and survival. Many other characters and the world itself are not developed with as much depth as those  in some of Cherryh's other early works, such as "Gate of Ivrel", "The Pride of Chanur", "Merchanter's Luck", and "The Dreamstone". Notably, the alien cat-people in this novel are entirely different from the hani of the Chanur novels, being in temperament and culture somewhat more like housecats than lions. Plot summary. Engineer Sam Merrit has been sent to the struggling colony planet Hestia to build a dam. Since the colony is placed in a large river valley and plagued by seasonal floods, the colonists believe that a dam is essential to enable them to escape the squalid  conditions that have persisted there since the founding of the colony over a hundred years ago. Upon arrival, Merrit finds that the reason the colony is confined to the valley and not making use of flood-safe lands is the presence of cat-like alien natives who attack anyone venturing outside the valley - but the dam will destroy the habitat of many of these natives. Pressured by the colonists to hurry the construction more than he considers safe, Merrit encounters and befriends a native woman, prompting some of the colonists to become hostile towards him as well. Merrit becomes increasingly  convinced that ending the conflict with the natives would help the colony more than the dam.