A Measure of Light
It is often said that New England’s Puritans came to America for freedom of worship. In a sense that is true. They abandoned England to build Bible-based communities free of influence by Anglican king and clergy – plus all other religions. Surely God would shower blessings upon them. If not, then wrong-doers must be rooted out and God’s wrath appeased.
To that end, Puritans wield the same abuses foisted upon them in England. Their opponents suffer whippings and dank jails, ear-cuttings, and banishment to the wilderness. The gallows wait for those who refuse to sit down and shut up. Women in this narrow-minded theocracy are silenced, no matter how keen their intellect or deep their spirituality. Mary Dyer, Anne Hutchinson, and Herodias Gardner are foremost among home-grown civil and religious dissidents punished by the Puritans, and their audacity changed American history.
Beth Powning’s A Measure of Light is the latest historical novel presenting Mary Dyer’s meteoric career to fortunate readers. Mary’s choices may seem baffling: leaving beloved husband and children to return to England in 1651, where she becomes a convinced Quaker and follows George Fox’s motley converts across England. When she returns to New England, Mary challenges Boston’s Puritans to either change their bloody anti-Quaker laws or to apply them to a woman, an act horrific even for hardened Puritan magistrates. With clear and accurate imagery and history, Ms. Powning places readers in Mary’s world. She also takes us into Mary’s soul, where such fate-filled decisions are the only way forward for this stout-hearted Quaker. Passionate and vividly imagined, A Measure of Light has my highest recommendation.
