Author’s Note

Had America’s founding fathers adopted the Dutch language, rather than their economic and political system, the tale portrayed in this novel would be better known to all Americans. The idea of a Dutch-speaking America was not implausible, considering the early Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam’s strategic placement among the original thirteen colonies. If one considers that the Pilgrims began their maiden voyage from Holland and the reigning English King of those times, Charles II, was once given political refuge by the Dutch, the thought of an Anglo-Dutch speaking America is not a stretch. But alas, Charles II, once secure upon his throne, in 1664, repaid Dutch kindness by sending a powerful English fleet to seize control of New Amsterdam, which eventually became New York, and it was the English language and culture that prevailed.

Their loss of New Amsterdam did not deter the Dutch from coming to the aid of the now English speaking patriots during the American Revolution. Dutch loans, muskets, munitions, and ports helped keep the revolutionary movement alive during the early years of rebellion, and the Dutch Republic was the first government to officially recognize the newly-formed United States of America. This aid and recognition led to Holland’s own war with Britain which ended badly for the Dutch. Yet the crux of Dutch history and its relationship with America really began at a much earlier time when the Dutch populace was one of the first to challenge the concept of the “Divine Right of Kings” to rule a nation. It was the most radical political idea of its age: a people could govern themselves. The Dutch went on to fight an eighty-year war with the kings of Spain for independence and in the process forged a democratic form of government. The success was a precursor, two centuries later, to the American Revolution and in part, the reason for this novel’s creation.

This author well understands that the genre of historical fiction is not in vogue today, probably because of its association with written history itself. For thousands of years, the men who wrote history almost purposely neglected the role women played in that eternal saga. Historically speaking, women’s beneficial contributions to humankind were usually depicted by the number of sons produced for “whomever be her lord and master”. Ancient authors never envisioned women would one day not only read those accounts but decline to purchase them after quietly passing judgment on their validity. Hopefully, my novel’s female characters demonstrate the genuine role women always played in crucial history.

Another problem with the modern genre of historical fiction is too many authors prematurely develop their characters or plots before beginning a search for an appropriate time and space to place them within olden days. They also have a tendency to overuse the advice of their fifth grade teacher by attempting to gather a reader’s interest in the first sentence of every paragraph which doesn’t always succeed with a historical narrative. Worse still, the accompanying dialogue sometimes blatantly ignores historical evidence for the sake of a more exciting plot. In this case, the true story of the early Dutch people is thrilling enough on its own merits. That narration almost insisted that I not allow my limited use and frequent abuse of the King’s English to be the essence of this story. It was as if a higher power demanded that “real” history tell the chronicle: a tale of the fifteen-hundred year cultural evolution, whose progression brought about the Dutch Revolution.

To cover such a vast amount of time, the reader will need to patiently absorb the first few chapters in preparation to meeting the core characters that play a major role in the initial stages of the Dutch War for Independence with Spain, the super-power of the time. Yet, these early chapters will reward the patient reader with many new discoveries about complicated historical events, while prompting every unwearied book lover to recall many long-forgotten item of historical significance they might well have wanted to remember about the past. The story, like the actual events, gets more exciting as the plot develops. In many ways, the narrative, at times, will remind one of the Star Wars or Lord of the Ring trilogies with one major exception. The historical events depicted really did happen.

The history of any country, including a tolerant nation like Holland, is regretfully a war story and my novel is no exception. Land and sea battles aside, within the fifteen-centuries of time which preceded the Dutch Golden Age, readers will encounter repulsive conditions to famine, plague, climate change, and far too many cycles of religious intolerance. All which led to periods of sequential inhumanity when an almost beast-like quality temporarily devours segments of the human race. Yet, when the reader puts this novel aside, I hope it is agreed, that countless generations of Dutch families, like the two portrayed in my novel, met the challenge of that ugly unkindness and were able to turn it all into a beautiful history which benefited humankind. That is the crux of this novel and the essence of the Dutch historical experience. Long live those people.