Hester(105)

Nearly every biography about Hawthorne mentions his forlorn decade after Bowdoin College when (in his own words) he “became a hermit,” took to “his chamber under his eaves,” and committed himself to becoming a writer.

But a close look at Hawthorne’s college years shows us a rabble-rouser who played cards and drank wine and was almost expelled for it. As Wineapple writes, “He constantly broke the rules.”

I set this book in 1829, four years after Hawthorne graduated from college. Given latitude by his family to keep his own hours and wander around Salem day and night, it’s easy to imagine this fatherless, handsome young man might have found a lover. She wouldn’t have been a society woman, for society was strict about such things. But what of a new immigrant to Salem, married to a much older man? A woman who found herself alone, abandoned, and drawn to her confessor? A seamstress like Hester herself?

I have Susan Cheever’s book American Bloomsbury (2006) to thank for helping me make the leap from conjecture to plausibility concerning the private lives of Hawthorne and his wider circle in Massachusetts.

Why wouldn’t the “real” Dimmesdale have a Hester? Why wouldn’t there be a lover?



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Many things in Hester are based on known fact. Hawthorne’s ancestor John Hathorne was an unrepentant magistrate in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692. Isobel Gowdie was a real person who was convicted of witchcraft in 1662 Scotland. Belief in witches wasn’t questioned in those times; the identification and punishment of “witches” was a matter of law. Both trial proceedings can be accessed online, and they are rich, frightening reading.

I learned much about the accusation and prosecution of alleged witches in The Penguin Book of Witches (2014) edited by Katherine Howe and In the Devil’s Snare (2002) by Mary Beth Norton. For Salem history I read When I Lived in Salem, 1822–1866 (1937) by Caroline Howard King, The Annals of Salem: From Its First Settlement (1827) by Joseph B. Felt, and Death of an Empire (2011) by Robert Booth. I visited the magnificent Salem Maritime National Historic Site developed and maintained by the U.S. National Park Service, where I learned much about the period and its shipping industry. The “Hawthorne in Salem” website offers endless visual and written material about the city and the author; especially notable is Emerson W. Baker and James Kences’s article, “Maine, Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692” (2001).

There were about two hundred African Americans living in Salem in 1829, most of them free but some only recently so. Hamilton Hall in Salem is a real establishment that was presided over by John and Nancy Remond for more than a decade. It is almost impossible to comprehend the contribution that free and enslaved Africans and Black Americans made to Salem’s wealth. Rita Reynolds, chair of the History Department at Wagner College, patiently and generously answered my questions about the free Black community in early nineteenth-century America and read the novel for points of interest regarding the same. Dr. Donna Seger, history professor at Salem State University and creator of the blog Streets of Salem, kindly and very promptly provided endless information on historic Salem life. She generously read the manuscript for veracity of time and place. Beth Bower at the Salem Historical Society answered many questions about the city and its people. The National Museum of Scotland’s digital resources, including “Mapping Slavery,” provided deep insights into the history of Scottish people and the slave trade. Any errors on these topics are my own.

Thanks to Monika Elbert, scholar and editor of The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, for spending time talking with me about this story. Thanks to the Peabody Essex Museum and Phillips Library. I relied on PEM’S Painted with Thread: The Art of American Embroidery (2000) by Paula Bradstreet Richter, along with a variety of embroidery instruction books, to bring to life the art and methods of needlecraft. Clare Hunter’s Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle (2019) and Kassia St. Clair’s The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (2018) provided depth and texture to my understanding of textiles and needlework. Rozsika Parker’s seminal second-wave feminist work, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (1984), informed my understanding of the duality of the needle as both a source of creative and economic strength and of female domestic submission.

Melinda Sherbring, embroiderer, banner-maker, author, and instructor, was patient and generous in answering all of my questions. I spent days burrowed in the Ladies’ Magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, and the Salem Gazette archives where articles and advertisements proved a treasure trove of detailed information on period fashion, goods, and commerce. Finally, for sharing their personal experiences with synesthesia, I am ever grateful to the lovely Anna Gustavsen and Debbie Lansing.



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My agent, Heather Schroder, is a true creative partner; she saw the seed of a good story in my questions and ideas and nourished it tirelessly. I can’t imagine having written this book without her enthusiasm, erudition, and friendship.

Sarah Cantin, my beloved editor, is a powerful advocate with a keen ability to find and sharpen a book’s depth and a character’s essence. I am so grateful and lucky to have Sarah’s hand in my work a second time around.

The team at St. Martin’s, especially Jennifer Enderlin, Lisa Senz, and Sallie Lotz on the publishing side; Kerry Nordling in subrights; and Olga Grlic for this beautiful cover, thank you. Dori Weintraub, Erica Martirano, and Brant Janeway are a brilliant and enthusiastic publicity and marketing team, and I am so thankful for all they’ve done for Hester.