For sixty years after World War II, death has haunted the entire Vanderveer family.Death lives within the soul of Jakob Vanderveer, who vowed to be a silent keeper of secrets. He believed this would be a loving way to keep his family safe. Yet, the shadow of Jakob's missing four years, his adolescent survival of the horrors of Jappen kampen (Japanese concentration camps) hit his family with a terrible cost.Then one day Jakob calls his now adult daughter, Luce Vanderveer Lewis. Her scientist-brother, Alby, has been hiding his ongoing drug addiction and has overdosed...again. With the openness of her father's phone call, old yearnings pull at Luce...to learn about her father's three and a half missing years in Japanese Concentration Camps.As the family gathers with Alby's doctor, Jakob is coaxed to reveal the past. Since Alby's recent near death, he can no longer profess that secret-keeping created a healthy family. First Jakob speaks in his usual generalizations regarding the horrors of war and too many deaths. Slowly he touches on the day the Japanese declared all boys fourteen and younger were "men." That day started the events that eventually left Jakob all alone among thousands of men.With the telling of his story, a seemingly cast-iron wall begins to crack. Jakob's real life account of what is behind his anxious and controlling ways leaves Luce shaken by greater understanding, love, and a new awareness of her own struggles-growing up across three continents.Neither Luce nor her parents can ever return to their first homes or their lost childhoods. Yet, Following Shadows, takes the reader on a journey of healing in which the Vanderveers discover that the past, rather than destroying, pulls everyone to the light of home.
About the Author: Janneke Margreet Jobsis Brown was born in the Netherlands, twelve years after her parents each survived World War II. She and her sister grew up in the Netherlands, Iran, Utah and Texas. Attending seven elementary schools on three continents, Janneke found that books became her best friend. Raised to pursue science or engineering, she gravitated instead towards becoming a psychotherapist. Janneke now lives in Northern California with her husband Don, and enjoys spending time with family and friends out in nature. Following Shadows is her first novel, and she has published articles on recovery. Janneke focuses on World War II, how it changed our world and the generations which came after. Her novel Following Shadows and her blog/website jobsisbrown.com take readers into the heart of trauma and back out again. Readers experience with Janneke, that surrendering to the pain of the past leads to liberation. As an author, public speaker, educator, and psychotherapist Janneke is known for compassionately turning painful history into stories with meaning. Janneke finds that getting grounded in the rock solid values of the Greatest Generation gives meaning to today's information age and isolation. As a daughter of a father who never talked about surviving Japanese concentrations camps in Indonesia as child and youth, Janneke finds that the past is not the enemy, but ultimately la friend who carries us into the present.