Hester: A Novel by Laurie Lico Albanese (Paperback)

Hester is Laurie Lico Albanese's imagined origin story for The Scarlet Letter. In the early 1800s, Isobel Gamble, a young seamstress carrying family secrets, sails from Scotland with her husband Edward, an apothecary in debt and under the spell of opium. Days after they arrive in Salem, Edward leaves as a ship's medic, and the gifted needleworker is left penniless and alone until she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne.