Hester's Daughters

by Elayne Clift

Overview

Hester's Daughters is a contemporary, feminist retelling of The Scarlet Letter. Hester is born in Boston in 1929. Her Puritan community is immigrant Jews. Spirited and humanistic, she makes her way in the world much as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s heroine did, bearing an out-of-wedlock child, Pearl (whose own daughter, Aviva, is bi-racial). Narrated by Pearl, the novel recreates the pivotal events and characters of the classic work, then imagines Pearl’s and Hester’s lives through the lens of gender in contemporary America.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014556026
Publisher:	O G N Publications
Publication date:	01/04/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	220
File size:	581 KB

About the Author

Elayne Clift is an award-winning writer, journalist and lecturer whose work in a variety of genre has been widely published internationally. Senior correspondent for the India-based news syndicate Women’s Feature Service and a contributor to Women’s Media Center, her work has appeared in such venues as The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers Magazine, Herizon Magazine, Transitions Abroad, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and various literary magazines and anthologies. She is a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books and her regular columns appear in the Keene (NH) Sentinel and the Brattleboro Commons. Hester’s Daughters is her 12th book and first novel. She lives in Saxtons River, Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

In the hands of a less talented writer, or one less steeped in classic literature, Clift’s Jewish, mid-20th century Hester Prinsky might appear to be more akin to Streisand’s feisty angst-laden Katie Morosky than Hester Prynne. It’s part of Clift’s genius that this is not the case; instead of rehashing in novel form the cheap stereotypes portrayed in contemporary literature and movies like The Way We Were, Clift delivers universal truths in complex packaging –

Maureen Gill

“Elayne Clift renders a stirring, contemporary retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic, The Scarlet Letter. Clift captures the spirit of Hester and Pearl and recasts them in a dramatic, compelling and expansive story. She cuts across time and culture and excavates connections that bind the hearts of women, no matter the century.”

Chiquita Mullins Lee