MARY DYER

The story of Mary Dyer, executed in 1660 in Boston for her Quaker beliefs, should be an instructive walk on the darker side of American democracy—but this treatment by debut author Plimpton reads more like one of those perky biographies inflicted on middle- schoolers for a social-studies project. In retelling Dyer's life, Plimpton relies a great deal on intuitive insight, because Dyer left only two pieces of writing- -letters to the Boston authorities. As a result, the author's presentation lacks the imaginative flair of a novel or the measured restraint of a serious biography. Moreover, it's flawed further by graceless, even arch, prose: ``conversation passed between them like a fresh gushing stream''; ``the inhabitants, predominantly deer, gazed in wonder at the big sails approaching.'' The facts of Dyer's life, such as they are, are all here: How Dyer and her husband arrived in 1635 in the Bay Colony in search of a new land and a freer way of worship, only to find that the Puritans had entrenched themselves with a government that was more a theocracy then a limited democracy. The Dyers prospered, but Mary—a woman of deep spirituality—soon grew dissatisfied with the rigid Puritan theology and its emphasis on male supremacy. A friendship with the charismatic Anne Hutchinson, who believed in a ``covenant of grace,'' led to the Dyers' expulsion from Boston to Rhode Island- -but it was Mary's meeting, while on a lengthy visit to England, with Quaker founder George Fox that radically changed her life. Fearful of anything that threatened its hegemony, the Boston establishment executed her for preaching her Quaker beliefs—an act that appalled King Charles II, who, through Royal Charter, secured religious tolerance in Rhode Island, though not in Boston, where the cruel treatment of Quakers continued. A second-rate rendering of a first-rate idea: the limit of popular tolerance in early American democracy as exemplified by the life and death of one courageous woman.