We all know the tragic heroine, Hester Prynne, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's [book:The Scarlet Letter|12296]. This book is a reimagining of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne. I had to read it, just couldn't resist.

Isobel Gamble comes to the New World from Scotland with her husband. Her ancestor was Isobel Gowdie who was to be hung for witchcraft in the 17th centruy, but she escaped. Isobel Gamble has inherited the ability of synesthesia - she sees words and objects as colors - and people would fear and be suspicious of this ability. Isobel hides it as best she can, but she has dreams of becoming a pattern maker and her ability helps her make beautiful work that others love.

When Isobel Gamble arrived in Salem, in the New World she first connects with Nathaniel Hathorne and they later become romantically involved, even though Isobel is married. Her husband went aboard a ship and took all the money Isobel had - she had to find ways to survive on her own. This is a tragic story that went places I could never have imagined - even involving the Underground Railroad.

I enjoyed the book and liked the writing style. It keep my interest throughout the story. I liked the character Isobel and was pulling for her all along to succeed with her pattern making and to get away from her husband. Early on I didn't like Nathaniel and liked him less and less as the story went on.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on October 4, 2022.

| About |

A vivid reimagining of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne, the tragic heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and a journey into the enduring legacy of New England's witchcraft trials.

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.


| Thoughts |

Whimsical, and intriguing. Really enjoyed this imaginative retelling of how Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s acclaimed novel The Scarlet Letter came about. The underlying magical realism with romance, history, and heartache filled me with such emotion that I devoured the book in want amounted to a day. Having to know what came next. This is a must read especially for Hawthorne fans.

I very much enjoyed this clever reimagining of how Hawthorne came up with the idea for The Scarlett Letter - this novel reads almost as though it is non-fiction, though there are certainly liberties with history. Any novel where we get glimpses into the ways that historical women had to manipulate their agency is a thumbs up to me (as long as it is well-written) and I appreciated the smoothness of the narrative.
I'll suggest this to students and other folks interested in historical fiction and adaptation.

4-4.5 stars!

I really enjoyed this unique reimagining of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Isobel Gamble sails to Salem with her husband Edward whose piling debts caused them to flee from Scotland. Soon after their arrival, Edward joins the departing ship, leaving Isobel alone and destitute in an unfamiliar country. She must use her skills as a seamstress and embroiderer to make a living until her husband returns, but during his absence, she meets Nat, a young writer haunted by his ancestors who sent innocent women to the gallows. Isobel too harbors secrets about her ancestors, and though it has been centuries since the witch trials, she must keep her strange talents to herself lest she be shunned by the townsfolk who already treat her like an outsider.

Overall, I was intrigued by this story and the creative spin on “Hester”. The author’s writing was so descriptive that I felt I could see the very colors that Isobel associated with the letters she embroidered. I think an illustrated version of this book would be wonderful, though the author’s depictions already paint a pretty vivid picture for the reader. Either way, I thought this was an excellent read and I’ll definitely be recommending this book!

*Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a copy of this book to review.*

This was a beautiful historical fiction book. It is a fictional book about the woman who inspired Hester in the Scarlet Letter. Isobel and her husband leave Scotland for the New World. Her husband abandons her and she has to make her own way. She meets Nathaniel Hawthorne and the two become friends. This is an odd time period as women are convicted of being witches just by being a bit different. This was a book I read quickly as I couldn't put it down. I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

If it was possible for me to give a standing ovation to a book I would have done so as soon as I finished the last word and sat it down. This book took a well known story and brought it back with a vengeance. There was so much heart in Isobel and her story and if you grew up with any kind of love for The Scarlet Letter and the story told within those pages you should add this book to your TBR immediately!

I DNF'd this at 10%.

The writing was OK, but didn't really speak to me. I found myself reading sentences and paragraphs and wondering what the point was or even what I just read. Maybe I wasn't in the right headspace for this book, or it was requiring more effort to read than I currently have. Maybe someday I'll pick it up and try again, but at this point it just isn't the book for me.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

With beautiful writing and wholly captivating story, Hester shines in its way of bringing out her enchanting prose and delivering a story that will keep many coming back. Hester is a tale inspired by the character Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlet Letter was a book a lot of us have probably read, but it's safe to say—don't come into Hester expecting anything like it. Told through dual timelines (which happens to be one of my FAVORITE things in a story), Isobel is such a beautifully written protagonist, and the disability she held truly allowed me for to learn. For those of you who adore historical fiction and prose to die for along with it, Hester should most definitely be a buy!

I really enjoyed Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese. It's a great origin story for The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hester lends a different perspective to the narrative and vividly shows what life was like for women in the past.

3 stars, upped to 4 because of the audiobook narrator

Hester is historical fiction that imagines the life of a woman who inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous book, The Scarlet Letter. The story unfolds at a leisurely pace (a bit too leisurely for me, to be honest), with lots of descriptions of the natural world, especially as seen through the eyes of Isobel, a highly skilled seamstress who sees colors in words (a condition called synesthesia) and who does magnificent embroidery. Isobel’s life starts in Scotland, where she learns to hide her ability to see colors in words, due to a family history of women having been accused of being witches. Interestingly that happened in the 1660s, not that much earlier than the Salem Witch Hysteria in the 1690s, and Salem, Massachusetts is where Isobel winds up, after emigrating with her husband, an apothecary who had fallen into opium addiction and bankrupted them.

Hester sheds light on what it really was like to live in Scotland and New England (specifically
Salem) in the early 19th century, with all sorts of societal strictures, especially for women. In addition to the main storyline of the affair between Isobel and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author weaves in the generational fortunes made by families who owned slaving ships and the plight of Blacks in New England. They were free but they lived in fear of slave-catchers. The law allowed escaped slaves to be taken back to slavery in the southern states, with large rewards for their capture. Even free-born Blacks could be captured (as happened to Solomon Northrup, who wrote the memoir Twelve Years A Slave), so “just” being free wasn’t really a protection. I knew nothing about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life and that was an interesting aspect of the book. However, I didn’t see what attracted Isobel to Nathaniel and vice versa, so their romance/relationship didn’t move me.

The author inserts short chapters that are supposed to transport you back to Scotland in the 1660s and Salem in the 1690s and beyond. I didn’t think these were necessary and took away from the main narrative by disrupting it.

Reading Hester has given me an incentive to re-read The Scarlet Letter which I read many decades ago as a school assignment.

I mostly listened to the audiobook of Hester, which was beautifully narrated by the ever-excellent Saskia Maarleveld. Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook and to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed this book. Days after finished reading I still wished I could remain in that time period, still follow our main character, Isobel. Instead, I will have to see what else this author wrote.

The book is a fictional origin story of how Nathanial Hawthorne came to write his classic book The Scarlet Letter. The woman in his book Hester Prynne, being modeled after our main character, Isobel Gamble. As a child she learns that colors with words are not normal and you may be labeled a witch, so it is a secret she must hold onto. This synesthesia runs in the family, by the women, and her maternal grandmother was indeed accused of being a witch but escaped before being put to death.

Quickly Isobel is grown, marries, then after a misfortune, they sail to the new world, landing in Salem, MA to begin anew. Here Isobel becomes herself, a woman, and where most of the story takes place.

I enjoyed how this book was written, how the story took place. We have snippets of another timeline for a brief page or two between each chapter. It ends up switching characters further along in the book, which lead to the reader knowing much more than the characters. Not sure I liked that, but the only aspect that really bothered me with this book.

A great read for Nathanial Hawthorne fans, who of course, don’t mind the inventions about his life.

This book was absolutely beautiful. From start to finish, it was the best thing I have read and enjoyed over the last few years and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. The story follows a young woman, down on her luck, who marries a man and ultimately ends up in Salem Massachusetts at the beginning of the 19th century. She comes upon a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the story truly takes off and becomes more beautiful as it goes one. The characters came so much to life that it was hard to believe that some of them were not based on real individuals, because they were so fleshed out and sympathetic. The story arc was absolutely beautiful, and the thread of Isobel [our main character]'s ancestors and Nathaniel's as well really helped bring us along with us.
I expect to see this as one of 2022's best historical fiction books, and I am glad I had the opportunity to read it.
This stunning book should be at the top of all of our reading lists, and you will not be disappointed.

This ebook was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hester is a beautiful historical fiction tale based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Isobel Gamble lands in Salem, is abandoned by her husband, and left to fend for herself. Her tenacity and talent with the embroidery needle allow her to survive in a city with a complex past. Her talent, red hair, and ability to see words as colors makes her different–different isn’t always good in a city with a complex past with witches.

I enjoyed the historical and literary references in this book. The correlations with Hester Prynne were effectively weaved into this beautiful story.

If you loved The Scarlet Letter or enjoy reading tales of creative and strong women, this is the book for you!

In Hester, Laurie Albanese poses the question ' What if Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter' was inspired by his secret affair with a married woman in Salem? This is the story of Isobel Gamble, a talented seamstress who arrives to America from Scotland with her husband Edward. Isobel is a descendent of Isobel Gowdie, a woman tried and found guilty of witchcraft, but who manages to escape to freedom. This is an atmospheric, original reimagining of the 1850s in Salem, MA, where you feel the history of witchcraft around every corner, and the ancestors of the witches and accusers live together, with or without much resentment.
Isabel and Edward have arrived here in an attempt to start over after he loses all their money in Scotland. He has grand ideas for an elixir of life and soon sails off with a trading ship to sell his idea, leaving Isobel alone.
She soon falls in love with a local, handsome writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. He also leaves her, and she is forced to survive on her own, using only the skill of her needle to avoid starvation. There are very few friends in this town as most of the descendants of the original founders fear outsiders. Isobel soon makes friends with her neighbors, and ladies who admire her embroidery. The remainder of the story is how she fights the establishment and makes a name for herself with her extraordinary skills. You see, Isobel has Synesthesia, and sees colors in people's voices, and in her letters. The Letter A is scarlet=passion, knowledge, and pain. Blue is hope, yellow is truth, orange is joy, and green is goodness. Her work soon becomes desired by locals and women from afar.
This story is about women's empowerment, feminism, and using your skills to your best advantage. There are also several subplots about slavery, and another timeline describing the history of Isobel Gowdie, her ancestor.
We also get a heaping does of the history of witchcraft during this time as well as how you would survive such times if left to your own devices. It made me want to go to Salem and tour some of the areas mentioned in the book! If you love historical fiction and learning more about Salem, MA, this book is for you!

Thank you to St.Martin’s Press and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this book to read and review.

This protagonist of this book was Isabel Gowdie, a Scottish girl in the 1800’s who had a gift for needlecraft and embroidery. She also sees the world as others don’t, associating different colours with people, words and letters. We now know this a neurological condition called synesthesia in which when a stimulus meant to stimulate one of your senses, stimulates several. However, at that time this condition was misunderstood and Isabel’s mother warns her to keep this secret as it is only 100-150 years ago that one of their ancestors was accused of witchcraft.

As a teenager she gets married, and boards a ship to Salem, Massachusetts with her new husband who are looking to restore their fortunes and have a fresh start. When they get there, her husband a pharmacist and student of alchemy leaves on a ship searching for supplies for a magical elixir which is to make her fortune. When he is gone, she has to provide for herself using her needle and thread. She interacts with many interesting local people, including author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This book was excellent, one of my top reads for 2022. It was an extremely interesting read with lots of great characters and excellent plotting. I look forward to reading more from this author!

The author writes a stunningly reimagining of The Scarlet Letter’s heroine, Hester Prynne. Isobel Gamble leaves for the New World and is left to fend for herself. She meets Nathaniel Hawthorne and she becomes his muse. I read the Scarlet Letter in college and it stuck with me all these years later. I was excited to read this story. This story is a reimagining with an impressive plot and characters. The story was written so well, I felt like I was right there with the characters in that setting,

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC, I received a copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

{4.5 stars}

Hester tells us the story of Isobel, a red haired Scot who has synesthesia - an ability to associate colors with letters and sounds. She is from a long line of women descended from a witch who escaped her trial. When Isobel emigrates to Salem, Massachusetts their history with witch trials has her senses heightened and she worries her own unusualness will set her apart in a dangerous way. On her passage over, she and her apothecary husband save the Captain's life and his favor helps them settle but her husband joins the next expedition she is forced to integrate and survive using her embroidery skills. She quickly catches the eye of local dreamer and writer Nathaniel Hathorne and is tempted in ways she never imagined. And Nathaniel is inspired to write his most famous character... one who will live through the ages.

I loved this! It's fabulous historical fiction that tells us both about small town America in the early 1800's and glimpses into the prior century in both Scotland and Salem during their witch trials. I loved Isobel's will to survive, her heart and resilience. The men were all pretty awful, which mirror's Hawthorne's work pretty well. The piece I really loved was the glimpse into the Underground Railroad and how that was weaved into the story.

If you read The Scarlet Letter in highschool and either loved it or didn't quite understand it as well as you wanted to, this story will give you great insight.

Thanks to St Martins Press via Netgalley for advanced access to this novel. All opinions above are my own.

Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese

🧵 A creative prequel to The Scarlet Letter, Hester is the story of a Scottish seamstress Isobel who sets sail for America in the early 1800s with her husband, but soon after arriving in Salem, discovers the New World is one she will have to navigate alone.

🪡 Her husband quickly sets sail on a trip posing as a doctor on the ship, but is gripped by his addiction to opium. In Salem as she searches for work with her talented needle skills, she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne and the two are drawn to each other immediately.

🧵When her husband is reported to have gone missing, the two become closer under the cover of night, for women are still sent away for being adulterous, and Isobel’s secret synesthesia may be misperceived as witchcraft. Isobel becomes the muse for Nat’s writing, and while the reader knows how this will play out on the pages as Hester Prynne, this story brings a human side to the characters while also touching upon the Underground Railroad with her trusted friends, stitching together more secrets for Isobel to unspool.

🪡If you are interested in a speculative and historically based journey behind the inspiration of a classic, you’ll enjoy this bewitching tale. Pub date is 10/4 when this beautiful jacket will be on display for all. Thank you NetGalley for this arc.

This is such a beautiful imagining of the woman who inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write "The Scarlet Letter".

This book has such depth! It explores love, fear, societal expectations, enchantment, freedom, passion, female empowerment, the burden of ancestors and the past, witchcraft, slavery, and so much more. The characters are deep and complex. They struggle, yearn for more, make mistakes, grieve, and love. I really loved the descriptions of Isobel's synesthesia. It brought so much color (literally) to the book and brought so many things to life. Her synesthesia layered with her ancestor's accusation of witchcraft and Isobel's own arrival in Salem, Massachusetts is such an interesting plot device!

I really loved Isobel as a character. She was so strong in the face of such adversity and she struggled and struggled to make the decision that was best for her despite societal expectations. She did not allow her synesthesia and fear stop her from pursing her passions. In fact, she used to them to propel her dream of needlework and dressmaking forward!

While I found the beginning of this book quite slow, it definitely picks up! The writing is beautiful and I love how the story explores and doesn't shy away from such complex and deep themes.
This is such a beautiful imagining of the woman who inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write "The Scarlet Letter".

This book has such depth! It explores love, fear, societal expectations, enchantment, freedom, passion, female empowerment, the burden of ancestors and the past, witchcraft, slavery, and so much more. The characters are deep and complex. They struggle, yearn for more, make mistakes, grieve, and love. I really loved the descriptions of Isobel's synesthesia. It brought so much color (literally) to the book and brought so many things to life. Her synesthesia layered with her ancestor's accusation of witchcraft and Isobel's own arrival in Salem, Massachusetts is such an interesting plot device!

I really loved Isobel as a character. She was so strong in the face of such adversity and she struggled and struggled to make the decision that was best for her despite societal expectations. She did not allow her synesthesia and fear stop her from pursing her passions. In fact, she used to them to propel her dream of needlework and dressmaking forward!

While I found the beginning of this book quite slow, it definitely picks up! The writing is beautiful and I love how the story explores and doesn't shy away from such complex and deep themes.


Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book!

Firstly, thank you to netgalley for an e-ARC of this book for my honest review.

Solid 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because after sleeping on it I still have a pretty positive feeling about it.

The start of this book is enchanting. I loved it. I think I should've been made more aware that this was going to involve an OC literally having a romance with Nathaniel Hawthorne and is not a Scarlet Letter retelling. It's more of an alternate history but it affects only a 1 year period and the universe continues as we know it. I don't find this bad, necessarily, but it did catch me off-guard for a moment.

Isobel and her backstory are well written and complex. Almost every character has some ulterior motive or complex narrative and are each attractive in their own way. Funnily enough, I think Hawthorne is probably the only exception, but I think it's because as a reader it's assumed you might already know his work and can project more information onto him.

The themes of repeating history, how tragic events can separate people for generations (the accused and the accusers), and hidden truths, are woven together throughout the narrative and the prose is nice, sometimes a little purple - usually whenever synesthesia is described, or 'the colors' and such. It can be a bit too heavy handed there. The setting is historically accurate and has multiple facets, which is refreshing since most historical fictions rely heavily on one or two aspects of the past; Laurie creates an entire atmosphere of Salem circa ~1817.

I think my only issues were:

Roughly halfway through the book Isobel is <i>painfully</i> ignorant on many issues, including the slave trade (and I mean like NO IDEA about slaves? really?), classism, sexual assault etc. Which are all things she had plenty of opportunity to learn/hear about in Scotland. I know that Isobel is like 17/18 at this point, and that it's super plot dependent that she doesn't just figure things out, but she was so stupid about some sensitive topics that I almost put the book down in disgust. It got better, it did, but that one section was so painful.

The ending was lackluster - and honestly if it had been more thought-out and maybe focused more on Isobel's life after her brief stint with Nathaniel, I would've given a 5 star rating. It's just too glazed over. I wanted to see more of her and Captain Darling, being happy and not just '18 years later'. It really brought me down from the extreme high that the climax of the book had brought.

It's never mentioned that Nathaniel Hawthorne has a deeply emotional affair with Herman Melville. :( /j