Told as fiction, Esther portrays the remarkable, nearly incredible life and times of Esther Brandeau, a young girl who lived in the eighteenth century, and who was the first Jew to set foot in New France. That she did so disguised as a boy, and that the eventual discovery of her deceit became an international incident, is but one part of Esther's dramatic story. With an emerging Canadian nation as its backdrop, Esther's story encompasses the quest for gender equality and the larger quest for freedom--as real to a teenager in 1735 as it is today.