The setting: "Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward." He's an apothecary addicted to opium--whose "... debts have forced them to flee Edinburgh for a fresh start in the New World." Shortly after arriving in Massachusetts he sets sail on a ship as a medic. Left alone in Salem, Isobel meets and is immediately attracted to Nathaniel Hathorne [the "w" was not part of the name--then] -- a man haunted by his ancestors. Isobel is a talented needleworker who see words as colors [synesthesia--which I found entrancing]. "Meticulously researched yet evocatively imagined, Hester is a timeless tale of art, ambition ... 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."

Sign me up. There is magic, herbal remedies, witchcraft, slavery, life in a port town, society vs. have nots, women's rights [basically none], immigrants [Scots, Irish--not welcome] and most importantly--needlecraft into which Isobel weaves stories and hidden meanings and earns her living.

I loved Isobel but also enjoyed the other characters--Mercy, Zeke, and Nell, in particular, as well as the widow Higgins. There also were other minor characters, all well-drawn.

Isobel's 1820s story is interspersed with [italicized] late 17th century [1670s-90s] letters from her ancestor--Isobel Gowdie.

Captured from the start, this novel kept me turning pages--wanting to see how it would turn out. I was enchanted [no pun intended].

This was an original, imaginative take on The Scarlet Letter and Hester Prynne and I enjoyed every moment. The characters were very real as were the insights into life in the colony.

There were a few instances where I wondered if the book would spiral down [for me], but thankfully, they did not. And two SLIGHT disconnects that I thought an editor should have caught--both towards the end of the book -- and both a cart before the horse issue/moment.

4.5, not rounding up.

Highly recommend.

Hester is a absolute beautifully written historical novel. A great “retelling” of the story behind the Scarlet Letter. Such a treasure to read. This will make a great book for book club discussions. The cover is beautiful and draws you in. I’m fascinated with Laurie Lico Albanese’s writing style and highly recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction.
Thank you Netgalley and St. Martins Press for providing me with a arc in exchange for my own honest review.

Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese

Hester is a retelling of the book The Scarlett Letter. This book takes place in the 17th century Scotland. Isobel is four and her mother is teaching her how to sew letters with a needle. Isobel sees colors when she is sewing and wants to do her letters in color not follow the norm of doing them in black. This is what she sees in her visions that it needs to be color. Isobel's mother smacks her daughters knuckles to stop her from sewing in colors. Her mom doesn't want people to think she is crazy or worse a witch. This is a period of time that witches are burned and hung.

I really enjoyed the retelling in how Isobel wanted to bring light to her stitching and how it was perceived as wrong. Being naive at that age and not understanding consequences. Isobel meets Edward Gamble who is an apothecary they eventually marry and head to America. They arrive in Salem. Edward has an issue with opium and leaves for gathering ingredients for his potions.

Isobel meets Nathaniel Hawthorne during the time Edward is gone and the two develop a connection with each other. This story is complex and drawas out many things that occurred during that time period the Salem witch trials, the slave ships. This was a well written retelling that allows the reader to follow along the depth of the experience through Isobel's eyes. Which opens the reader to many things of the time period.

This was a five star read for me. I recommend this book to anyone who likes retelling of classic stories. This is the second retelling I read that was new this year and both have been five stars for me. I think Mrs. Albanese did a great job in story telling with Isobel being the driving force to make this a great retelling.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for a free copy of this book for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

The cover of this book already had me intrigued, but then when I realized it was an imagining of the muse for the heroine in the Scarlet Letter I was sold. And it did not disappoint!

It’s a beautifully told story of Isobel Gamble - descendent of a woman accused of witchcraft in Scotland - and her journey to self discovery. In this novel you’ll find love, lust, family secrets, guilt, courage, magic, friendship, and more. Highly recommend!

4.5 stars - only because it seemed to drag a bit in the middle - but overall I really enjoyed the character development and story!

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Pub date: 10/4/22
Genre: historical fiction, literary fiction, feminist retelling
In one sentence: Scottish seamstress Isobel finds herself drawn to Nathaniel Hawthorne in early 1800s Salem - will their romance be her downfall?

I didn't have to read The Scarlet Letter in school, but everyone is familiar with that scarlet A. Laurie Lico Albanese does a wonderful job telling the story of Isobel, the inspiration for Hester Prynne, showing her magic in the form of beautiful needlework and vibrant colors that only she can see (she experiences multiple forms of synesthesia). I loved the flashbacks to Isobel's ancestors and how their magic affected their lives. Isobel's struggles in Salem were instructive as to the immigrant experience - the question of "who gets to be a real American?" is still so relevant today. I loved the early Underground Railroad subplot as well.

I read this book in two days because I was so engaged in the story. Both text and audio are beautifully done, as master of accents Saskia Maarleveld lends a lovely Scottish brogue to Isobel. I preferred the text because I could read more quickly, but if you love accents in your audiobooks, this is a great choice for listening!

I recommend this one to historical fiction readers, as well as to readers who love feminist retellings. It reminded me a bit of The Change, and I know it's going to be a hit this fall!

Thanks @stmartinspress for my ARC and @macmillan.audio for my ALC!

Rounded to 4.5 stars.

CONTENT WARNING: torture, blood, death of a parent, grief, addiction, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, violence, slavery

I had to read The Scarlet Letter in school, but I don’t remember much about it. This book, however, makes much more of an impression. I’m loving the trend towards feminist retellings of classic stories, and rounding out the stories with a more emotional component to them. The marginalized voices of history are given more weight, and I find that I am drawn to these stories much more than the original versions.

In this book, we get to know the woman behind the inspiration for Hester Prynne, and it flips the entire story upside down. Isobel is an immigrant from Scotland, and she has no shortage of history, hopes, and dreams. She’s a tough, smart, talented woman who has been through her share of hardship, and she’s made some poor choices in the past. But they led her to America, which had historically been viewed as a beacon of hope—a country full of opportunity and a way to start over. But when she arrives, she realizes that it’s simply another set of constraints.

Arriving in Salem, she’s faced with some new challenges. Salem is a town founded on Puritan ideals, and they don’t take kindly to “her kind,” meaning people from Scotland. She manages to make some friends from various social classes, and her path crosses with Nat Hathorne, an aspiring writer. And with her husband away, potentially lost for good, she falls prey to temptation.

I loved getting inside Isobel’s head. She’s open-minded, and isn’t afraid to learn about the things she doesn’t know. She forges relationships, even with people who are different from her, and gets to know her Black neighbors, and their struggles, which are unique from her own, yet she manages to find common ground with them in some ways. She forms her own opinions about topics that she doesn’t agree with, even when her opinions aren’t widely accepted at the time, yet holds true to her values.

“‘Sometimes you got to act like you are nothing—so long as you remember that it’s a lie. So long as you remember you’re as strong as you believe you are.’”

One aspect that was really intriguing was the portrayal of synesthesia. Isobel has it, and is forced to walk a fine line, since it wasn’t well-understood until more recently, and at those times, it was viewed as something suspicious. It was seen as a sign of a witch, or of madness, at varying times, and both of those were threats to Isobel in her time. And while it was something that Isobel had to keep secret, it was also portrayed as a strength, as far as her creativity. She turned what was viewed as a negative characteristic at the time into a positive, since it helped her create ever more beautiful artwork in her needlework.

Ultimately, this is an overwhelmingly feminist retelling, where people who are pushed down in society work to take back their power in the best ways that they can. The women, the Black people, and the people on the outer edges of society claim their own power, and I was here for it! It was beautiful watching Isobel learn how to harness her strengths, even as she’s questioning what it really means to be an American, in a society that consistently deems her to be an outsider. The story talks about the intersection of gender, class, race, and nationality, as well as the way that women were controlled through the fear of being labeled a witch. The writing itself was beautiful and transported me through time to the earlier days of our country, and it made me realize not only the ways it has changed, but more importantly, the ways it hasn’t. And overall, this was an incredible book.

In Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese creates a hypnotic world where we're invited to consider contrasting themes of past and present, desire and pain, hope and disappointment, freedom and constraint. It's also a story of creator and muse, as Albanese imagines what might have been the inspiration behind Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and its heroine Hester Prynne.

As that inspiration, Isobel is a character I found easy to care about. She is warm, intelligent, and talented. But she also makes mistakes, sees her own weaknesses, and changes in response to lessons learned. I appreciate her emotional journey in this book. There is a strong feminist current throughout the book as Isobel comes to better understand herself and her place in the world.

I also appreciated becoming more familiar with synesthesia (which Isobel experiences) and the intricacies of embroidery and dressmaking through her character.

Hawthorne - Hathorne, or "Nat" - actually became a distraction for me in this book. He is so brooding and melodramatic. It's easy to see how Isobel mistakes his charm for depth, but that quickly unravels as his cowardice and selfishness are exposed. Even though he's the one who achieves fame in the real world, here he feels like a caricature and plot device, serving only to get Isobel where she needs to be in her own story. [Which might just be the author's intention.]

Some reviewers have complained that there is "too much" happening in this book, especially with the author's choice to touch on the Underground Railroad in Salem. For me, it fits nicely into the book's themes of "otherness" (Isobel comes from Scotland to America), strength, resilience, found community, and the things we need to wisely hide in order to persevere.

There are also implications of witchcraft and witchery woven throughout the book, which may or may not have been necessary, but maybe felt like a given with Salem as its main setting. It just added to the enchantment for me, so I didn't mind at all.

It's clear that Albanese did a lot of historical research for this book, and I appreciated joining her on an imaginative "what if" in a very real past. Hester was an enjoyable, thoughtful book I would be glad to recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Hester is a reimagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter. In this story our main character, Isobel Gamble is a gifted embroiderer who can also see colors in letters and words. She arrives in Salem after the witch trials have occurred but they are still very much remembered and feared. Isobel is left on her own when her husband goes off to sea and she must try to survive without his help. The story is vivid and rich in details and the characters were well developed.

I was given an advanced ebook from @netgalley and @stmartinspress (thank you!) and I devoured it! I highly recommend picking this book up- perhaps in the fall with a roaring fire and a mug of hot cider. Hester will be published October 4th just in time for some pre-Halloween reading!

I’m including some photos from my own visit to Salem several years ago. It’s quite an interesting place.

This is a sort or prequel to The Scarlet Letter and Hester Prynne. Fantastic imagery - I felt like I was in the story. This is a historical fiction which interweaves Salem/Underground Railroad.

I enjoyed the two time periods presented – Isobel’s during 1829, and her grandmother’s during 1662 – and the parallels between both women’s stories of persecution. Even Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story and Isobel’s are intertwined through the historic lens of “accuser and accused.” Fable and story are impressively infused in this work as well.


Definitely recommend!

This one totally surprised me! I started it as it was a reimagination of the woman who could have inspired Hester and how Nathaniel Hawthorne might have conceived the main character of his famous book and I absolutely enjoyed the love story of Isobel, her heartbreak and her life afterwards. Isobel, who is descended from someone accused of witchcraft has her own magic with colors and words and when she sets sail to New England, her life takes a turn totally unexpected. Now she is all alone making ends meet and forming connections with people as new immigrants.

The readers don't need to have read 'The Scarlet letter' but having read it made it more enchanting and made me appreciate it more. It is an absolutely wonderful read and highly recommended!

Very imaginative storyline that reveals its connections with the scarlet letter slowly throughout the book and I found to be much more interesting than the actual scarlet letter book. Did start off a little slow for me but glad i stuck this one through. Beautifully written tale about slight magic, love, loss, crimes of the era, hope and learning about life.

I enjoyed this story. If I have read the Scarlet Letter, I don’t remember it, but after reading this I may pick it up. This is not a happy go lucky read, I listened with Kindle VoiceView and I needed to pay attention so I didn’t get lost.
The research was excellent, the writing was done well, and the storyline was heartfelt and interesting. I felt that I learned quite a bit on how lonely and difficult it would be to immigrate from another country and then to be left on your own, no friends and all your family is left behind.
Received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for my unbiased review – For me, this one comes in with 5 stars.

Did not finish and stopped at 33 percent. nothing wrong with the book, I just put it down and never picked it up.

Laurie Lico Albanese is a new to me author but one that is a master writer that shines through every page of Hester. Not at all what I expected but oh so good so very good. Though it is based on a real historical writer and a real book he wrote, this is a book of fiction that is entirely believable. Unique and original I was taken hook, line, and sinker from beginning to end, especially the end. The best book I have read this year.

Oh, if only to hear in color!

An ARC of the book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley which I voluntarily chose to read and reviewed. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This started off really well but then just draggggged.

"Hester" tells the story of Isobel Gambel, the <b>fictional</b> inspiration for Hester Prynne, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Hawthorne is one of my favorite authors, though I'm a bigger fan of his short stories and haven't read TSL in years. That said, it doesn't matter if you're super familiar with the source material because this has barely anything to do with it.

Isobel, a poor girl from Scotland, has synesthesia, a condition where she experiences letters and sounds as colors. Unfortunately, no one in the 1800s knew what that was, so she just learns to keep it a secret. Her foremothers who also have the condition were regularly accused of witchcraft, all the way back to the famous Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie. Why Albanese decided to link Gowdie to Hawthorne's work IDK but, whatever. Isobel moves to America with her husband, who is a wang and away at sea anyway, so she starts an affair with Hawthorne. Positioning her in the role of Hester and Hawthorne in the role of Dimmsdale if you ignore all the themes of TSL and focus on just the adultery aspect.

I know I'm being salty but this would have actually been okay if the novel didn't pull a total bait-and-switch once Isobel lands in America. Instead of having anything to do with Hawthorne or the Puritanism which inspired his most iconic work, Hester becomes a slow moving commentary about the social environment of Salem, MA in the mid-1800s. Which I guess could be cool if anything had really happened or if the prose hadn't been strongly purple-adjacent. Realistically, this book could've been at least 50 pages shorter without really sacrificing anything.

Also, why did she randomly change the spelling of Hawthorne's last name?

TL;DR - It wasn't the worse but I got super bored.

To fans of feminist stories, witchy tales of realistic romance, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, this is the novel for you! As the eponymous name implies, Hester is about the woman behind Hawthorne’s famous heroine. Albanese begins with the premise that she was a real woman, that the Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s fame was based on a person from his own past, fantasized into the character of The Scarlet Letter.

In this backstory, Hester Prynne is a young Scottish woman, Isobel Gamble, who arrives in the New World for the express purpose of leaving behind the old one. It is an adventure tale, interspersed with romance, lust, avarice, and desire for belonging. The novel follows Isobel through her first few years in the northern colony, around a hundred years after the terrible witch trials at Salem, in the early 1800s.

But the magnetic charm of Hester doesn’t hinge on this legendary and vile history, even though the witch trials still bestow both a lurid glamour and an ugly stain on those whose ancestors took part in it. The community as a whole has a long memory and a store of dark secrets: the witch trials and the African slave trade (though illegal, the formerly enslaved and the enslaved still feel the manacles of bondage in all kinds of social, cultural, and institutionalized ways).

Simultaneously, the novel does not stand on the appeal of the fictionalized Hester or the “real” Isobel, though the characters in Hester are well-crafted as complex, nuanced individuals filled with flaws and virtues. No, the real pull of this story is its vivid portrayal of Puritan life as a gendered, stratified, prestige-hungry society. Hester spreads out for the reader a vast and complicated landscape of social politics. The world Albanese crafts is a real one. The reader gets a look into the world of Puritan men and women that lies beyond the stereotypical discussions of marriage and sexlessness and religion; Albanese’s Isobel is a working woman — a seamstress — and we see through the eye of her needle into the labor women do, both socially as the pillars around which society is upheld and economically as employers, employees, merchants, and consumers. We also see the emotional labor women are tasked with, according to society and their men — husbands, brothers, fathers, and so on.

The women of Hester are not powerless as a result of their labor. They do, in fact, wield immense influence and can — in some circumstances — exercise a great deal of agency. They work within the patriarchal framework of Puritan society to defy it, uphold it, mold it to their needs and ambitions. Isobel Gamble is only one of the women in Hester around whom the novel revolves. There is also Isobel Gowdie who is Isobel Gamble’s ancestress; Mercy, a woman of African descent, formerly enslaved; Felicity, a shrewd merchant in Salem; Nell, a fellow immigrant; and the Silas women, members of Salem’s old guard elite. Hester is about all these women and the world they lived in and shaped like clay through their ambitions and circumstances.

The story takes all the way to Pearl, the narrator in Hawthorne’s novel, but it is not the Pearl that he created for us; she is Isobel’s Pearl. Any fan of The Scarlet Letter will find continuity and novelty in Hester.

This is a gorgeous novel; its prose is simple, succinct, and sharp, much like the crisp starkness of Puritan collars and its story is ornate, a twist of knots and tiny stitches like the floral embroidery of Salem’s women.

*This book was received as an Advanced Reviewer's Copy from NetGalley.

Hester is a potential answer to the question "what inspired this?" At least when it comes to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'Scarlet Letter'. Centering on Isobel, a young married woman from Scotland who makes her way to the New World, it tells of people still beset by notions of witchcraft, strict hierarchal roles that govern women and other minority groups, and of a man who was trying to write, but maybe couldn't face his own failings even as he looked to his past.

By no means do I believe this to be a true account of what happened (neither should you, that's why this is marked as fiction). However, I do think it's an interesting premise into the 'what ifs' that surrounded the Scarlet Letter's origins. Moreso though, the story is of a young woman trying to survive in the circumstances she's given. Add in a little bit of 'magic' by way of her Synesthesia (although admittedly I think the book would have carried even without that extra feature, she could have just been a woman that took joy in using colors for her art).

Honestly, my only real complaint is the character interaction. Sometimes it just felt forced or too convenient for where the plotline needed to go. And the poor Captain, he really did deserve better. Character complaints aside though, I enjoyed the premise of the book and thought it was an interesting perspective on inspiration.

Review by M. Reynard 2022

This was a decent read, albeit slow for the first 50-60%. It was hard to determine if it was trying to be fantasy with the embroidery or not. I feel that I would’ve appreciated it more had i read The Scarlet Letter beforehand.

What a wonderful reimaging of the book, The Scarlet Letter. Isobel has always seen things and sounds in color. She is successful in keeping this part of her hidden, so she isn't viewed as a witch. She eventually marries Edward Gamble but soon learns her husband is an addict who loses all his money on the drugs he uses on himself, rather than for his apothecary. They board a ship to Massachusetts with a kind captain who eventually gives Edward passage on another voyage to earn money. Isobel finds herself all alone in a new world. She is a talented seamstress who begins to support herself. She begins a love affair with Nathanial Hawthorne and longs for a life with him. When her husband does not return, Isobel begins to hope for a life with Nathanial. But when the unthinkable happens, she finds herself scorned and in despair. There is a lot more going on in this story that emerges as you continue reading. I really liked every bit of this intriguing story. I received a complimentary eBook from Netgalley.com

so excessively written with so much purple prose i almost stopped reading
the disjointed 'past' narratives at the end of chapters also threw me off and stopped the flow of the main story
i also found that it didn't add to the book's plot/strength as well
and the PACING god it moved so slowly and it felt like almost nothing had major consequences