ANNEKE JANS IN THE NEW WORLD

Freels offers a novel about a determined, widowed Dutch mother making her way in the North American colonies against the odds.

In 1630, Dutch colonists Anneke and Roelof arrive in New Amsterdam from the Netherlands. “We’re going to have to make our own rules and be very quick-witted and careful if we mean to survive,” Anneke says to her children. The family soon heads north to Fort Orange, where Roelof will work as a tenant farmer for Heer Van Rensselaer. There’s money to be made there, even if it will require years of hard work. All goes according to plan, more or less, until 1637, when Roelof dies suddenly of a snake bite. Anneke goes on to marry a local minister named Evert, who, due to his profession, is much more involved in Dutch colonial affairs than Roelof had been. As tensions rise in the rapidly growing community, both with the “Wilden” (as the Dutch referred to the land’s Indigenous inhabitants) and among the colonists, Anneke becomes better acquainted with the complex local disputes and struggles. Freels’ work tackles an oft-overlooked era of North American history, when the Dutch controlled modern-day Manhattan and Albany, among other areas. The story explores some aspects of this period that may be new to many readers, as when Heer Van Rensselaer insists on a Dutch form of government for his lands in which “a proper burgher council headed by a schout who would prosecute evildoing and five schepenen who would advise the director.” Anneke meets a wide range of people in this fledgling society, many of them trouble her in one way or another; one man she judges to be “annoying in the extreme,” while another is “arrogant and unpredictable.” Indeed, Anneke becomes bolder as the years go by, and many readers will enjoy seeing how she and those around her adjust and adapt to their transforming world.

A nuanced and edifying angle on the fragility of early colonial life.