Content Warning: Hester references sexual assault and slavery, and depicts misogyny, addiction, racism (including period-appropriate language), maternal and infant death (by childbirth), injury (by self-flagellation), and violence (including domestic violence).

Hester opens with narrator Isobel Gamble imagining a young Nathaniel Hawthorne after the death of his father, somehow knowing she, “a story just as powerful” as his father (9), would one day meet him. She then recounts her childhood in Glasgow, Scotland, which is characterized by her experiences with synesthesia. When she is five, her mother teaches her to embroider samplers as a means of teaching her to read. Isobel stitches letters in different colors, according to her synesthetic experience of them, but her mother scolds her, fearing Isobel will be accused of madness or witchcraft. Isobel tries to suppress her sensory experiences to no avail, but still denies their likely hereditary existence. Her mother stitches a hidden scarlet “A” on one of Isobel’s dresses, purportedly for Abington, the town of Isobel’s birth.

Isobel visits her Auntie Aileen, a dressmaker, who praises her sewing. Aileen likens dressmaking to secret-keeping. She comments on Isobel’s work, likening her to her ancestress and namesake, “Isobel Gowdie, Queen of Witches” (15).