Flutterby™! : All Ships Follow Me

I owe a whole bunch of friends and acquaintances book reviews, but on Tuesday evening, Charlene got a couple of copies of Mieke Eerkens' All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents. I read the preface, and then devoured it in one continuous read.

It's the tale of her father, who was a young boy of Dutch descent living a relatively privileged life in Indonesia when the Japanese invaded it in World War II, and who then survived internment there, and her mother, who was the child of Dutch parents who were members of the NSB. The look at that latter situation, the young girl with parents who were affiliated with an organization associated with Nazi collaboration, and the traumas not just of war but of post-war reconciliation and social adjustment, was the part that was most enlightening.

A good look exploration of inter-generational trauma, but also of how a society deals with the cascade of effects that come from casual hate.

We've got two copies that we'll likely be loaning around, but if you're looking for a read that doesn't map easily to current events, but definitely opens up pondering the implications of some of them, I'd recommend this one.