A Lily Among Thorns

A novel in progress

In 1637, Anne Hutchinson stood trial for heresy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Charismatic, learned, and dangerously outspoken, she was condemned for claiming a direct relationship with God—and for daring to lead.

A Lily Among Thorns follows Anne from England to Massachusetts to the wilderness of Rhode Island and, eventually, to New Netherland where she meets her end in a brutal massacre. Along the way, Anne sheds the categories that once defined her—mother, midwife, dissenter, wife—and becomes something stranger and more visionary.

Blending historical fiction with the mysteries of spirit, the novel traces a woman’s unraveling and remaking on the far edge of the world. Inspired by the historical record but diving deep into what has been left unsaid, the novel imagines Anne as a seeker pulled beyond doctrine, nation, and body toward a wild, unknowable God.