Author Laurie Lico Albanese returns to hometown

Prynne? And if so, who was she?

In Hawthorne’s book, Prynne is the woman who must wear the letter “A” for the rest of her life as a symbol of having committed adultery. In Albanese’s reimagining, Isobel Gamble, a young Scottish seamstress, comes to meet Hawthorne during the 1800s. The book dives into what it meant to be American in the 19th century, and how women were targeted for being different. “This is Hester Prynne finally tells her own story,” Albanese said. “This novel asks the question, was there a real Hester

And what would she tell us if she could?” This is Albanese’s third historical novel, and her first one set in America after her other two took place in Europe. Her first book, published in 2000, was contemporary; she switched to historical fiction because she liked reading those types of books, and that’s what was getting the best reception. Her first historical novel, “The Miracles of Prato,” coauthored with her friend Laura Morowitz and published in 2009, was well-received, Albanese said. So she took that genre and ran with it.

It’s been more than a market decision for Albanese. She said that doing research for her historical fiction books transports her back to being a student and spending hours at the library reading encyclopedia after encyclopedia to get the information that she needed for an assignment. “I always think about when I school, in high school, we always had to write reports — and that my reports, then, as it would be now, consisted of physically going to the library and literally sitting on the floor with all my different books,” she said. “I love doing that, and I kind of feel like that’s what I’m doing when I Continued on page 2