- Hardcover: 328 pages
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (Mar 18 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0771026226
- ISBN-13: 978-0771026225
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#184,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #71 in Books > History > Europe > Netherlands
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“The family’s struggles to endure terror, surveillance, bombing and the edges of starvation have been pieced together with colour and compassion. . . . Their story of war, dislocation and survival is well and evocatively told.”
– London Free Press
“Amazingly detailed and moving . . . it is the quintessential Canadian story.”
– Ottawa Citizen
“Moving and lyrical . . . If this book were less carefully crafted and not as well written, it would be mere family history. Instead, it’s also the history of a country – and of the people who lived in it during a terrible time.”
– Montreal Gazette
“In this heroic gesture of recovery of family history, the authors not only recreate their grandparents’ world, but the horror of life in Nazi Occupied Holland. History is retold in relentless detail through the tragedies lived by people who become as real to us as our own family. The Occupied Garden is a triumphant refusal to accept the silence that erases the past.”
– Rosemary Sullivan, author of Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille
“A dramatic and moving account of the World War II occupation of The Netherlands and its subsequent liberation by Canadian troops as seen through the lens of one Dutch family's experiences. The Occupied Garden is a fine read.”
– Mark Zuehlke, author of Terrible Victory: First Canadian Army and the Scheldt Estuary Campaign, September 13–November 6, 1944
“A personal, unsentimental, intensely compelling ‘memoir.’. . . The tiny, mundane details of these very ordinary lives are brilliantly interwoven with the colossal events and backwash of all-out war that move the story relentlessly, sometimes breathlessly, forward. . . . As in a painting by Seurat, the masses (‘dots’) of information meticulously build up, slowly, vividly, revealing the many personalities and the devastating times.”
– Ernest Hillen, Globe and Mail
“This is a fascinating, informative, beautifully written book.”
– Winnipeg Free Press
– London Free Press
“Amazingly detailed and moving . . . it is the quintessential Canadian story.”
– Ottawa Citizen
“Moving and lyrical . . . If this book were less carefully crafted and not as well written, it would be mere family history. Instead, it’s also the history of a country – and of the people who lived in it during a terrible time.”
– Montreal Gazette
“In this heroic gesture of recovery of family history, the authors not only recreate their grandparents’ world, but the horror of life in Nazi Occupied Holland. History is retold in relentless detail through the tragedies lived by people who become as real to us as our own family. The Occupied Garden is a triumphant refusal to accept the silence that erases the past.”
– Rosemary Sullivan, author of Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille
“A dramatic and moving account of the World War II occupation of The Netherlands and its subsequent liberation by Canadian troops as seen through the lens of one Dutch family's experiences. The Occupied Garden is a fine read.”
– Mark Zuehlke, author of Terrible Victory: First Canadian Army and the Scheldt Estuary Campaign, September 13–November 6, 1944
“A personal, unsentimental, intensely compelling ‘memoir.’. . . The tiny, mundane details of these very ordinary lives are brilliantly interwoven with the colossal events and backwash of all-out war that move the story relentlessly, sometimes breathlessly, forward. . . . As in a painting by Seurat, the masses (‘dots’) of information meticulously build up, slowly, vividly, revealing the many personalities and the devastating times.”
– Ernest Hillen, Globe and Mail
“This is a fascinating, informative, beautifully written book.”
– Winnipeg Free Press
Product Description
A moving, revealing memoir about a man and his young family during the Nazi occupation of Holland, as told by his granddaughters, one a beloved novelist.
At once a memoir and a social history of a time, The Occupied Garden is the story of a good but poor man, a market gardener, and his fiercely devout wife, raising their young family in Holland during the Nazi occupation. Pieced together by the couple’s granddaughters, who combed through historical research, family lore, and insights from a neighbour’s wartime diary, the story chronicles how the couple struggled to keep their children from starving, but could not keep them from harm, and reveals the strife and hardship endured not just by them, but by a nation. These experiences, kept from subsequent generations of the family, were almost lost until, long after their deaths, the path of the couple through the war and on to Canada was uncovered. A personal and intimate account within the larger context of a terrorized nation, this is also a story of the bonds and strains among family, told with the haunting, evocative prose for which Kristen den Hartog is known.
At once a memoir and a social history of a time, The Occupied Garden is the story of a good but poor man, a market gardener, and his fiercely devout wife, raising their young family in Holland during the Nazi occupation. Pieced together by the couple’s granddaughters, who combed through historical research, family lore, and insights from a neighbour’s wartime diary, the story chronicles how the couple struggled to keep their children from starving, but could not keep them from harm, and reveals the strife and hardship endured not just by them, but by a nation. These experiences, kept from subsequent generations of the family, were almost lost until, long after their deaths, the path of the couple through the war and on to Canada was uncovered. A personal and intimate account within the larger context of a terrorized nation, this is also a story of the bonds and strains among family, told with the haunting, evocative prose for which Kristen den Hartog is known.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insight to Dutch-Canadian Ties,
By
This review is from: The Occupied Garden: A Family Memoir of War-Torn Holland (Paperback)
"The Occupied Garden" tells the story of a Dutch family coping with German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. The unpredictability of what the occupiers would inflict next made life precarious. We get not only an accurate picture of what life was like in Holland at the time, but also the wider aspects of national and international influences shaping the conduct of the war. The role of Canadian soldiers liberating Holland is passionately conveyed, explaining Dutch gratitude to this day. The family's emigration to Canada in 1951 reveals the aspirations of a large number of war-weary people. The book is of great relevance to understanding the special bond that exists between the Dutch and Canadians. Authors Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski are to be congratulated for digging into family history and bringing the story to life in a modern context.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I give this book a V for Victory,
By
This review is from: The Occupied Garden: Recovering the Story of a Family in the Wartorn Netherlands (Hardcover)
This is wonderful story about an ordinary family living through a horrific time in history. The young couple (Gerrit & Cor) try to shield their 5 children from the horrors going on in the world around them, while making sure they have enough to eat. We find out that they are not always able to protect their children. Although Gerrit , the father, makes a good living with his Market Garden, the Germans commandeer much of his produce for Germany, so that during the last year of the war, his wife, Cor, rides many miles on her bicycle trading family possessions for food. The devotion of Gerrit & Cor and the love they have for their children and extended family in near-by towns is well portrayed amid the ghastly treatment handed out to the Dutch population by the German occupiers.The everyday life of a family living under such dire circumstances really comes alive, and makes one feel guilty for the little things we grumble about today. We often talk about how "stressed" we are, but it is quite unimagineable to have endured the life of this young family who were just one among thousands. It is understandable why no one wanted to talk about it. The battles and atrocities of the war have been well-researched. The parallel story of the Dutch Royal family, suffering similar tribulations as the ordinary denHartog family makes a good contrast of both ends of the economic scale. Gerrit & Cor's granddaughters have written a beautiful and loving tribute.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasant read,
By
This review is from: The Occupied Garden: Recovering the Story of a Family in the Wartorn Netherlands (Hardcover)
In The Occupied Garden (McClelland & Stewart, 2008), Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski tell the story of their grandparents' experience of the II World War in the Netherlands. The book is well written and interesting. The authors did extensive research and nicely weave together the strands of the lives of their grandparents, the Royal Dutch family, the events of the war including the liberation by "onze Canadezen", and the challenges of immigration to Canada. Especially if you are of Dutch immigration stock, you will enjoy this fine book.
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