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A masterpiece is the collection of a brilliant mind, a stalwart heart, and the deepest desire to bring dreams into being.

Isobel Gowdie had the gift of colors. Bright, joyful hues that beamed from cloth to print. We know of it today as Synesthesia which is a sensory phenomenon with multiple responses through vision and sound.

Imagine, if you will, the hushed warnings from mother to child to suppress any leanings toward delving into colors...... any type let alone vivid spurts of tone even in Nature. Isobel's mother in Scotland told her red-haired daughter to choose threads of black and brown in her stitchings so as not to be accused of witchcraft or being in the Devil's snare. And so Isobel suppressed her desire to light the fabrics with spark and eye-catching designs.

Isobel meets Edward Gamble, an apothecary, who asks her to marry him. All seems well as the young couple boards a ship for America for a better life. But Isobel will soon find out about Edward's "true colors" as time passes. Their arrival in Salem opens the door to a different kind of survival. Acceptance in Salem takes on an almost bartering system that operates on the worthiness of the individuals to reside there.

Edward takes to the sea searching for elusive potion-making ingredients for his business. Isobel is left to make it on her own in a small rented cabin. She falls upon her talent for stitching and embroidering and sells her wares to small shops.

But in the absence of Edward, Isobel meets the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne who is taken with poetry and trying to publish his latest works. The flame is lit and we will experience a forbidden connection between these two. A connection that will begin to unravel the lives of them both.

Laurie Lico Albanese has created a superb cross-blend based on The Scarlet Letter and Hester Prynne. Albanese has an uncanny talent of bringing life to Isobel and form to the complicated character of Nathaniel Hawthorne. She parallels her story with that of Isobel's namesake in Scotland in 1662 accused of being a witch. She, too, had the gift of colors.

And in the mix of things we find the early makings of the Underground Railroad in contrast to the nepharious slave ships along the coast. Albanese brings out issues of class, social status, female status, poppy addiction, and judgmental attitudes toward immigrants from Ireland and Scotland. Hester is a work threaded in the human experience during this era with the realization that some things never change and some drastically do. Hester is a grand work by the talented Laurie Lico Albanese.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to St. Martin's Press and to Laurie Lico Albanese for the opportunity.