about the book - excerpt - reviews and interviews

reviews and interviews

Read the London Free Press review

Read the Gazette review

Hear an interview

Read Kristen's article, Examining a Royal Difference, in The Ottawa Citizen

Praise for The Occupied Garden

"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 time.... These reconstructed lives just hum with authenticity."
The Globe and Mail

"This is a fascinating, informative, beautifully written book.... The authors have done a great deal of research and have cobbled it together with an eye for truth, irony and balance."
Winnipeg Free Press

"The Occupied Garden is, on one level, an amazingly detailed and moving account of one family's life ... during the Second World War. But it is much more. Indeed, it is the quintessential Canadian story."
The Ottawa Citizen

"Moving and lyrical.... In The Occupied Garden, [the authors] piece together their story, saving it from oblivion. 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 a people who lived in it during a terrible time."
The Montreal Gazette

"A story that is not only a family memoir; but a fascinating social history of the time.... And it's a 'must read' for students of modern history and anyone who grew up in Europe in the Second World War."
Waterloo Region Record

"We come to know the den Hartogs so intimately we feel we are seated at the dinner table, sharing their meagre meals."
The Vancouver Sun

"Truly gripping.... This is intimate history: the writers recover not only the facts, but the tastes, smells, and lived experiences of events that today almost defy belief."
Quill & Quire

"The den Hartog family history is laced with suspense.... Their story of war, dislocation and survival is well and evocatively told."
London Free Press

"A must read! ... an extremely well-written book with a personal, fascinating, emotional family touch."
De Nederlandse Courant

"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

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