Hester is a marvelous, sensual tale which envisions a young Scottish immigrant, Isobel Gamble, as she arrives in Salem, Massachusetts. When abandoned there by her husband, she mets and falls immediately in love with the just-out-of-college Nathaniel Hawthorne. As determined as she is to make a life on her own with her needlework skills, he wishes to become an author.
Part of the sensuality of this book lies in the beautiful descriptions of women as artists with their needles and thread. Here, the needle not only represents women’s domestic submission to men, but also their economic wherewithal, creative strength, and their ability to subvert male dominion with a mere slip of metal. As a woman who has embroidered and practiced other forms of needlecraft since the age of five, I rejoiced in the role the needle plays in this book. I loved the lush play of the spectrum as Isobel, a synesthete, sees sounds, voices, words, letters as colors. This “gift” makes her prey to those staunch god-fearing souls of Salem who believe any woman out of the ordinary is inherently a witch.
This book has some kinship with Leah Angstrom’s Out Front the Following Sea in describing early America but is more sensual and on some level, more believable. It also has some kinship with one of my favorite books, Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund, showing the same type of indomitable heroine in an early American setting.
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Hester (St. Martin’s Press, October 4, 2022) is available through:
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You can read my review of Leah Angstrom’s Out Front the Following Sea here.
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