Deborah Noyes Angel and Apostle

Angel and Apostle

Deborah Noyes

Unbridled, Oct 2005, $23.95

ISBN: 1932961100

In 1649, Pearl knows her mother Hester Prynne spent time in the stocks and has been condemned as a fallen woman by her Puritanical neighbors; The Scarlet letter engraved on her by a dutiful priest represents intolerance. Her sire Dimmesdale may have felt some guilt about abandoning his lover and hiding the truth about siring his daughter, but though he marvels at Hester's courage in his journals,he never mentions her by name as if spelling out the letters Hester would mean acknowledging his part in her downfall.

Pearl grows up in Europe far from where her mother was accused and condemned. However, everyone knows she is a child born out of wedlock and some feel her father is the devil; all treats her accordingly. Pearl has learned to trust no one as she depends on herself to overcome the intolerance of others. Over the years she becomes a wife and mother living in England and America, but though in love never quite loses her distrust of everyone even those inside her heart.

Though Pearl acts more like a modern woman at times, fans of the classic Hawthorne tale will fully want to read this powerful sequel that takes some poetic license with the key cast members especially Pearl. The story line follows up on the climax to The Scarlet Letter as the audience learns about Pearl's life in mid to late seventeenth century Europe and America where intolerance remains steadfast. Historical readers will appreciate this deep look at an era through the eyes of a woman who struggles to overcome her place beneath the food chain by a society that damned her mother for having her.

Harriet Klausner