The Seekers' Series Is Born
In the early 1960’s. when our family spent a three-year tour of military duty in The Netherlands, I never dreamed that experience would one day turn me into a novelist. All the while I was learning the language, making friends with the people and falling in love with the quaint historical remnants all around, I was being prepared to write The Seeker’s Series.
Back home, my curiosity soon had me digging out the history books in search of the secrets that had made the country and her people what they are today. The treasures I found made me ask, Why have I never been told about this before??
In the early 1970’s I realized I was not ready to write about Dutch history, either as a historian or a novelist. I put it all in a thin notebook on a shelf above my desk and worked at learning to write and market my works.
In 1980, the characters began calling to me from what had become my dream notebook. I brought them out and played with them, interviewed them, went for walks with them in the park. They grew into real people and would not leave me alone until I wrote their captivating story of love and pain and searching after God.
Some historical novels grow from a story the author wants to tell and sets it down in some exotic setting, dressing its characters in period costume, tamping little chinks of real history into empty corners here and there.
Pieter-Lucas and Aletta belonged to another class of historical novels. The human dilemmas they face are common and timeless, and everything in their development as characters rings true to what we know instinctively of human nature. However, they are sons and daughters, not of my preconceived plot ideas as their author, but of their own times. Their story could only happen the way it did because it grew directly from their time and place in history.
Each novel in the series contains all the help you need to acclimate yourself to sixteenth century Netherlands. As you indulge your love for adventure in faraway places, you will soon hear the old twists of language and now outmoded thought processes. But coming from the mouths and minds of captivating characters, they will lead you into a world completely new to you. Like me, you will lose yourself and come home reluctantly.
The Dove and the Rose
“A dove is for anointing.” Kaatje van den Garde whispered to her infant son, Pieter-Lucas, on Christmas morning 1548. “A Christmas rose is for healing,” murmured Pieter-Lucas to his childhood sweetheart, Aletta, on Christmas morning 1567. The story that links these two statements was constructed from a host of charming relics of a rare time and place in history. The Dove and the Rose captures the tumult of sixteenth century Europe trying to redefine the world and the poignancy of two young people in passionate search for them-selves, each other, and a world of peace.
The Citadel and the Lamb
Squeezed from every side, Pieter-Lucas and Aletta flee to an ancient stronghold for refuge. It turns, instead, into a trap, where they are thrown together in precarious intimacy, with refugees from prejudices they had never dreamed about.
Further, Pieter-Lucas’ dedic-ation to duty, a suspicious deadly illness and an old vow conspire to threaten their young family with disinte-gration. Impossibilities and confusions force them at last to define clearly the bedrock of their faith and make some unexpected choices. The result brings healing to some long-festering wounds and hope for the uncertainties of the years of war still threatening.
The Maiden's Sword
Pieter-Lucas and Aletta had
a heart for healing and art, not for war. But war was a way
of life in sixteenth century Holland. It tore at the fabric
of society leaving it in shreds and threatening the young couple’s fondest dreams
with disaster, Throughout
The Maiden’s Sword we watch a strange mixture of
the godly, the confused,
and the opportunistic all picking their way through
the same minefields in search
of safety. They learn, each
in his own way, some unexpected lessons of commitment, compassion,
risk and faith that will make them ultimate victors in all of life’s arenas.
