Queen Esther

By: John Irving

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Synopsis: After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award-winning The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud&’s, Maine, where Dr Wilbur Larch takes in Esther, a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism.Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board a ship from Bremerhaven to Portland, Maine, and anti-Semites murder her mother in Portland. In the orphanage at St. Cloud&’s, it&’s clear to Dr Larch, the physician and director of the orphanage, that the abandoned child not only knows she&’s Jewish, but she&’s familiar with the biblical Queen Esther she was named for. Dr Larch knows it won&’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; he doubts he&’ll find any family to adopt her.When Esther is fourteen, soon to become a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic family with a history of providing for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren&’t Jewish, but they detest anti-Semitism and similar prejudice. Esther&’s gratitude to the Winslows is unending. As she retraces her steps to her birth city, Esther keeps loving and protecting the Winslows – even in Vienna.The final chapter of this historical novel is set in Jerusalem in 1981, when Esther is seventy-six.

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