This image is the cover for the book From Infamy to Hope

From Infamy to Hope

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, From 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.

Stephen Lewis

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Stephen Lewis holds a doctorate from New York University in the literature of 17th century New England Puritanism, and he is a professor of English Emeritus at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island, NY. His memoir, Dementia, a Love Story, was a finalist in 2021’s BookLife non-fiction competition. He has published eight print novels, both genre and literary, for large (Berkley), medium (Walker), small (Arbutus and Mission Point Press) publishers, along with an eBook original for Belgrave House. The three novels that comprise Mysteries of Colonial Times, published by Berkley, were set in the 17th century. Murder on Old Mission, published by Arbutus, was a finalist in the historical fiction category of Foreword Magazine’s 2005 book of the year competition. Its sequel, Murder Undone, came out in 2016 from Mission Point Press, located where he now lives in northern Lower Michigan. He has also published six college textbooks and numerous poems and short stories.

Austin Macauley Publishers