![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The political-religious squabbles that beset colonial Boston in the 1630s were especially fervid, given that founding governor John Winthrop foresaw, correctly, that the fate of this hardscrabble "citty on a hill" would ultimately "be made a story and a byword through the world." Little wonder, then, that when a well-spoken newcomer, Anne Hutchinson, the 44-year-old mother of 15 children, began attracting influential men to "conventicles" (scripture discussions) held in her parlor, Winthrop and his ministerial cohorts soon singled her out as a potential enemy of the church and the state in those days, essentially the same entity.ĭrawing on a staggering amount of historical detail (including transcripts of Hutchinson's two trials, the only paper trail left by most woman of that era), 12th-generation descendant Eve LaPlante plots her forebear's downfall with the vivid immediacy of a novel. Small-town life has always been subject to petty power struggles. ![]()
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