From Infamy to Hope, Stephen Lewis
From Infamy to Hope, Stephen Lewis
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From Infamy to Hope

Author: Stephen Lewis

Narrator: Erin spence

Unabridged: 7 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/03/2025


Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Moon on November 25, 2025

Stephen Lewis has delivered a devastatingly powerful narrative in From Infamy to Hope, a novel that feels at once intimate and sweeping. As a seasoned reader of historical fiction, I’m rarely taken by surprise but this book stunned me. Not with twists, but with its emotional precision, its unflinchi......more

Goodreads review by Moure on November 25, 2025

From Infamy to Hope is one of those rare historical novels that grips you by the throat from the first page and does not loosen its hold not because of spectacle, but because of the raw, unsettling humanity breathing beneath every paragraph. Stephen Lewis has written a story that is at once painful,......more

Goodreads review by BECKY on March 18, 2026

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 p......more

Goodreads review by Joshua on November 27, 2025

A Beautifully Written Study of Courage Amid Oppression What I admire most about this book is how deeply it respects its protagonist. Rachel is never treated as a symbol or a plot device. She is a full human being with fears, hopes, confusion, and an instinctive desire for dignity. Her story unfolds g......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on March 20, 2026

This was a quietly powerful read. The story of Rachel really stayed with me, her strength, her fear, and the impossible choices she had to make felt very real. I appreciated how the author wove personal struggle with the harsh realities of early colonial life without over, dramatizing it. The histori......more