After forty years, John Irv­ing returns to the world of his best­selling clas­sic nov­el and Acad­e­my Award – win­ning film, 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 the ship to Port­land, Maine; her moth­er is mur­dered by anti-Semi­tes in Port­land. Dr. Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jew­ish fam­i­ly to adopt Esther; in fact, he won’t find any fam­i­ly who’ll adopt her.

When Esther is four­teen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a phil­an­thropic New Eng­land fam­i­ly with a his­to­ry of pro­vid­ing fos­ter care for unadopt­ed orphans. The Winslows aren’t Jew­ish, but they despise anti-Semi­tism. Esther’s grat­i­tude for the Winslows is unend­ing; even as she retraces her roots back to Vien­na, she nev­er stops lov­ing and pro­tect­ing the Winslows. In the final chap­ter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther Nacht is sev­en­ty-six.

John Irving’s six­teenth nov­el is a tes­ta­ment to his endur­ing abil­i­ty to weave com­plex char­ac­ters and intri­cate nar­ra­tives that chal­lenge and cap­ti­vate. Queen Esther is not just a sto­ry of sur­vival but a pro­found explo­ration of iden­ti­ty, belong­ing, and the endur­ing impact of his­to­ry on our per­son­al lives show­cas­ing why Irv­ing remains one of the world’s most beloved, provoca­tive, and enter­tain­ing authors — a sto­ry­teller of our time and for all time.