Named a Most Anticipated Book for Fall 2022 by Goodreads - Washington Post - New York Post -
BuzzFeed - PopSugar - Business Insider - An October 2022 Indie Next List Pick - An October 2022
LibraryReads PickA hauntingly beautiful--and imagined--origin story to The Scarlet Letter.
--People WHO IS THE REAL HESTER PRYNNE?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
Glasgow 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 Laurie Lico Albanese's 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.
