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Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese

Historical fiction

Hester

by Laurie Lico Albanese

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Quick take

You'll never look at the Scarlet A the same after reading this quintessential New England tale of power and desire.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Feminist

    Feminist

  • Illustrated icon, Literary

    Literary

  • Illustrated icon, Based_on_a_Classic

    Based on a classic

  • Illustrated icon, Infidelity

    Infidelity

Synopsis

Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward. An apothecary who has fallen under the spell of opium, his pile of debts have forced them to flee Edinburgh for a fresh start in the New World. But only days after they’ve arrived in Salem, Edward abruptly joins a departing ship as a medic—leaving Isobel penniless and alone in a strange country, forced to make her way by any means possible.

When she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, the two are instantly drawn to each other: he is a man haunted by his ancestors, who sent innocent women to the gallows—while she is an unusually gifted needleworker, troubled by her own strange talents. As the weeks pass and Edward’s safe return grows increasingly unlikely, Nathaniel and Isobel grow closer and closer. Together, they are a muse and a dark storyteller; the enchanter and the enchanted. But which is which?

In this sensuous and hypnotizing tale, a young immigrant woman grapples with our country’s complicated past, and learns that America’s ideas of freedom and liberty often fall short of their promise. Interwoven with Isobel and Nathaniel's story is a vivid interrogation of who gets to be a “real” American in the first half of the 19th century, a depiction of the early days of the Underground Railroad in New England, and atmospheric interstitials that capture the long history of “unusual” women being accused of witchcraft. Meticulously researched yet evocatively imagined, Hester is a timeless tale of art, ambition, and desire that examines the roots of female creative power and the men who try to shut it down.

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Get an early look from the first pages of Hester.

Hester

ONE

Salem was meant to be a new beginning, a place where the sharp scent of cinnamon and tea perfumed the air with hope; a place where the colors could be safe and alive in me. I was nineteen years old and Nathaniel Hathorne was twenty-four when we met on those bricked streets. His fingers were ink-stained; he was shy but handsome. The year was 1829, and we were each in our own way struggling to be free—he with his notebooks, I with my needle.

Some people will tell you that Nat spent the better part of a decade after Bowdoin College alone in his room learning how to write. But that is a fabrication meant for the ages.

The true story of how he found his scarlet letter—and then made it larger than life—begins when I was a child in Scotland and he was a fatherless boy writing poetry that yearned and mourned.

Sometimes I still picture him in my mind, a lonely nine-year-old boy with a bad limp and a mop of dark hair standing at the edge of the Massachusetts Bay waiting for a ship. He knows that his father has died of yellow fever somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, yet the boy is waiting with pencil at the ready. Something in him knows—I believe this, even after all this time—that although his father will never return, a story just as powerful is coming toward him. It is me, bent into the wind, fleeing home with my colors and my needle and my own set of needs and dreams.

It is me with my red letter secreted away.

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Why I love it

Are we prisoners of the past, doomed to pay for our ancestors’ sins? Or are we agents of change, blazing a new path forward?

In Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese’s provocative historical novel, societal judgment weighs heavily on independent young women. Lush, sensuous, and wholly original, Hester breathes new life into Hester Prynne, the tragic heroine of The Scarlet Letter, and offers a powerful reimagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic story while celebrating the irrepressible female spirit.

In mid-1660s Scotland, Isobel Gowdie, a red-haired woman with sensory gifts, stands accused of dark magic. Two centuries later, her red-haired granddaughter Isobel Gamble, a gifted seamstress, moves to New England, where memories of the witchcraft trials cast a long shadow. Lonely, penniless, and haunted by her ancestry, Isobel must rely on her unique talents to survive while her husband is at sea. Soon, she meets Nat Hathorne, a sensitive writer grappling with his own troubled legacy. Art and ideas draw them together and, over time, they grow closer. But will their mutual desire bring salvation or ruin?

Meticulously researched yet eminently readable, Hester offers a fresh take on the traditional immigrant tale. The lessons Albanese imparts are as timely as they are timeless and provide a fresh feminist lens through which future generations can reconsider the past.

Member ratings (15,724)

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The Stone Witch of Florence
The Seventh Veil of Salome
Hera
The Lion Women of Tehran
The Return of Ellie Black
Annie Bot
More
Bright Young Women
The First Ladies
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Weyward
Queen of Thieves
Hester
Love on the Brain
Bronze Drum
The Bodyguard
The Change
Lessons in Chemistry
Kaikeyi
My Body
Half Sick of Shadows
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
Outlawed
More Myself
Practical Magic
A Rogue of One's Own
True Story
Fleishman Is in Trouble
The Book of Longings
Untamed
The Kingdom of Back
The Girl with the Louding Voice
Throw Like a Girl
Trick Mirror
Bringing Down the Duke
Three Women
Shout
Thick
Still Lives
The Rules of Magic
The Nightingale