Hester

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.

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.