Years before this novel opens, the family bank of Vernon's stood on the edge of disgrace. The man who ran it had brought it near ruin and fled — and it was Catherine Vernon, clever and formidable, who met the crisis, stopped the run at the cost of her own fortune, took control, and rebuilt the house from the brink. Under her the bank regained its standing, and Catherine became its undisputed head and the benefactress of her whole family.

Now an old woman, Catherine presides over the bank and over a household of dependent relations lodged in the row of houses they call the Vernonry — poor kin who live on her charity and resent it. Into this world comes Hester Vernon, daughter of the very man who once nearly destroyed the bank, raised on Catherine's bounty and growing up proud, intelligent, and quietly furious at her dependence. Between the formidable old woman who built everything and the proud young one who has nothing runs a current of recognition and antagonism: two strong women, old and young, set against each other.

The bank's fortunes, meanwhile, are again in peril. Catherine has given her trust and her love to Edward Vernon, the charming young cousin she means to succeed her — but Edward is weak where he seems strong, and in secret he begins to speculate with the bank's money, drawing Vernon's once more toward the abyss. As his recklessness tightens, Hester's pride, Edward's danger, and Catherine's hidden vulnerability draw together.

Published in 1883 and now regarded as one of Margaret Oliphant's finest novels, Hester is a clear-eyed study of female capability denied an outlet, of the dependence of women on money and family, and of power across the generations. In its doubled heroine — Catherine and Hester, the same strength divided by a lifetime — Oliphant counts the price of being the strong one in a world that grants a capable woman no proper use for her gifts.