Told in the compelling voice of Rachel Moore, a housemaid in 17th century Puritan Boston and featuring that colony's two most powerful figures in Governor John Winthrop and his courageous opponent Anne Hutchinson,
F
rom Infamy to Hope
is the story of the religious persecution of a servant girl made pregnant by rape. Convicted of fornication, she is sentenced to wear a black W for "whore" on her gown. Over the opposition of Hutchinson, the colony heads into war with the Pequot Indians. Rachel masquerades as a boy soldier, hoping to recover her baby who was sold to the Pequots by her alcoholic father to satisfy a debt.
She is at the war's final battle when the colonial army burns down the Pequot's fortified village in Mystic, Connecticut. Will she find her baby among the ashes?
Although Hutchinson was ultimately excommunicated and banished, a statue in her honor now stands before the State House in Boston, and a parkway bears her name in New York near where she died in another Indian war. Her descendants include F.D.R., the Bushes, as well as Mitt Romney. The present day Pequots now run Foxwood Casino near the site of the massacre in Connecticut.