Manga Classics: The Scarlet Letter Softcover

In small, Puritan Boston, a woman holding her baby girl walks onto a scaffold. She is Hester Prynne. Her child is Pearl, but no one knows the father. When asked by the minister Arthur Dimmesdale to reveal the fellow sinner, Hester refuses. As time passes, Hester moves to a thatched cottage outside the town. She is forced to deal with terrible prejudice, even though everyone buys her embroideries. Her husband, who she thought had died at sea, returned on the day of her trial and now seeks the father of Pearl. He, Arthur, Hester, and Pearl all struggle to lesser or greater degrees as moral conundrums are presented to them.

There is a great sense of drama conveyed by the illustrations. They are masterfully crafted to portray the emotions invoked by the situations Hester and other characters are in. However, there was a rather key element to the plot where one of the characters acts as if another character has been torturing him, but we are given no hints whatsoever that this has been happening, which made it hard to sympathize or even know what was going on. While this was irritating, the rest of the book was fantastic.