Yes, that Hester — the fallen woman who bore the Scarlet Letter while raising her daughter on her own. She is looking back, across that clearing, and 150 years, at her fateful lover.
Less a re-telling or transposition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic than a re-purposing of the materials to tell a different version, Hester In Sunlight, revolving around the relationships between the (unnamed) narrator; her husband Sonny and gender fluid child Luna; her sister Dani and her two kids; and their parents, is a heady and stimulating riff on contemporary motherhood and parenting.
“The narrator in my novel has OCD,” novelist Hannah Calder says. “The book is an exploration of what OCD thinking can do to a classic, a meditation on what thought — often unwanted — can do in the gaps that naturally occur in literature.”

Hannah Calder is a UK-born novelist who lives on unceded Syilx Okanagan territory in Vernon, B.C. She earned her MA in English Literature in 2004 from Simon Fraser University and has published poetry and fiction in West Coast Line, The Capilano Review and dANDelion. Currently, she teaches English and Creative Writing at Okanagan College. In 2022 Hannah co-directed the documentary Why We Write: Poets of Vernon, while her second novel, Piranesi's Figures, has been adapted into a screenplay that's quietly looking for its just-right producer. Hester In Sunlight is her third novel with New Star.

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In glittering language, Hannah Calder's new novel pulls readers through the thought patterns of a contemporary writer, of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and of his character Hester Prynne. Beautiful and fascinating, it's a wholly fresh take on The Scarlet Letter and its long reach. A book with a mind of its own.

Alix Hawley, Author of My Name is a Knife.