From the inside cover flap:"Mary Dyer is a seventeenth-century Puritan who flees persecution in England, only to find the colony of Massachusetts Bay as dangerous as the country she left behind. Though she is the wife of a successful merchant and mother to their children, she becomes stigmatized following a birth gone terribly wrong and is reviled as a friend to the infamous heretic Anne Hutchinson. Mary tries to accept New England's harsh realities, but is out-raged by the cold-hearted Puritan magistrates, with their doctrinaire stranglehold on church and state, their subjugation of women, their wars against the natives in the surrounding territories and their vicious treatment of any who challenge their rule. Mary becomes one of America's first Quakers. As both outcast and privileged citizen, caught between the callings of faith and the ambitions of her husband, she comes to the realization that she must follow her convictions in order to bring an end to the brutal repression of the Quakers in Massachusetts, for whom death by hanging is the ultimate punishment."

Starting to read this book today.

Finished reading this book yesterday (Jan 17, 2018). This is the 3rd novel that I have read written by Canadian author Beth Powning and it didn't disappoint. She writes with such extraordinary depth and style that the reader is immediately drawn into the story and connects with the characters portrayed. I had very little understanding of the Puritans and Quakers of England and the New England states in the 1600's prior to reading this book. Through Beth Powning's writing in this historical novel of the life of Mary Dyer, I have a greater appreciation for the religious persecution that took place during these times. The evolution of Mary Dyer's religious beliefs along with her commitment to the role of women and the right to religious freedom for all individuals during Puritan governance make her an historical figure that will not soon be forgotten.