Three and a half decades after Nathaniel Hawthorne published “The Scarlet Letter,” his son Julian reviewed the novel.  

He said in April 1886 edition of The Atlantic that the story was known historical fact before "his father touched it." 

However the novel came to be, it is an exceptional American classic. The story is rich in symbolism and drama and remains quite intriguing to contemporary writers.

Here are two terrific must-read stories about characters spun from the pages of "The Scarlet Letter."

The first is “Hester” by Laurie Albanese, published last October.  

I love this book for its rich and imaginative descriptions of life in a Salem, Mass., still haunted by the witch trials two hundred years later.  

I admire its strong and unpredictable central character, a badass single mother. And I savored an ending that still held an eleventh hour surprise.  

The second “Scarlet Letter” must-read is “I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem” by French writer Maryse Condé and translated by Richard Philcox.    

Historical documents describe Tituba as one of the few Black women who lived in 17th century Salem and she was among the first to be accused of witchcraft.

Novelist Condé says she was inspired to write Tituba’s story after getting lost in the campus library at UCLA and finding herself in the history section, staring at a shelf full of books about the Salem witch trials.

In Condé’s telling, 7-year-old Tituba sees her mother hanged for fending off a rapist and witnesses the evil visited upon the powerless by the Puritans. She meets Hester Prynne while she is jailed and awaiting trial.

In the foreward, activist Angela Davis writes that resurrecting Tituba’s voice is resurrecting ”the voice of a suppressed Black feminist tradition.”

— Kerri Miller | MPR News