The Invisible Hour

 

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman. Oh, how I love Alice Hoffman's books! She

can write and create magic so effortlessly (or it seems to me). She took the book,

The Scarlett Letter, and turned it into a magical book of her own!

One day Mia Jacob’s mother, Ivy, took her young daughter Mia and ran away to join The Community, a local cult out in the country. There Ivy soon married the cult leader and became totally under his control. The Community had many, many rules, including that books were not allowed. The Community ran a farmer’s market in the local town and when Mia was old enough to work at it, her mother took her to the local Library, where the public restrooms were. Ivy was overcome with all the stacks of books, and soon her mother allowed her to go in there on farmer market days. The librarian began to help Ivy find books that she would enjoy. 

Mia fell in love with the book, The Scarlett Letter. One day she stole it from the library and hid it in a secret panel in the barn where she could have access to it whenever she wanted. Ivy felt that the two-hundred-year-old book captured what she and her mother’s lives had become. She had never read any book that resounded so much with her. And she fell in love with the words and the author.

It's hard to write more about the book, because I don't want to give anything away. However, the local librarian and her partner eventually helped Mia get away from the cult and have her own life. She also met Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Now that should peak your interest!)