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Mieke Eerkens
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All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents Kindle Edition

by Mieke Eerkens (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 58 ratings
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An engrossing, epic saga of one family’s experiences on both sides of WWII, All Ships Follow Me questions our common narrative of the conflict and our stark notions of victim and perpetrator, while tracing the lasting effects of war through several generations.

In March 1942, Mieke Eerkens’ father was a ten-year-old boy living in the Dutch East Indies. When the Japanese invaded the island he, his family, and one hundred thousand other Dutch civilians were interned in a concentration camp and forced into hard labor for three years. After the Japanese surrendered, Mieke’s father and his family were set free in a country that plunged immediately into civil war.

Across the globe in the Netherlands, police carried a crying five-year-old girl out of her home at war’s end, abandoned and ostracized as a daughter of Nazi sympathizers. This was Mieke's mother. She would be left on the street in front of her sealed home as her parents were taken away and imprisoned in the same camps where the country’s Jews had recently been held. Many years later, Mieke’s parents met, got married, and moved to California, where she and her siblings were born. While her parents lived far from the events of their past, the effects of the war would continue to be felt in their daily lives and in the lives of their children.

All Ships Follow Me moves from Indonesia to the Netherlands to the United States, and spans generations, as Mieke recounts her parents' lives during and just after the war, and travels with them in the present day to the sites of their childhood in an attempt to understand their experiences and how it formed them. All Ships Follow Me is a deeply personal, sweeping saga of the wounds of war, and the way trauma can be passed down through generations.

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  1. Print length
    324 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Picador
  5. Publication date
    April 2, 2019
  6. File size
    28501 KB
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  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A generational memoir of war and its long-lasting effects on descendants....The author examines the psychology of loss on the part of children caught helplessly in tumultuous events....The sins of the fathers are visited on their children, indeed. Eerkens' poignant book sheds new light on the history of World War II."--Kirkus Reviews

"A war memoir that reads as hauntingly and movingly as a novel...[A] fresh and courageous look at Dutch, and indeed global, history, and as importantly, at her parents, whose personal growth, strength, and perseverance are nothing short of marvelous. Highly recommended."--Historical Novel Society

"In this masterful memoir, Eerkens has written an epic account of her family's colonial and wartime past that reckons with the often mysterious and misunderstood legacy of intergenerational trauma. Lyric, meditative, and deeply reported, this is an essential book that reveals so much about what we need to know about being human."--Jennifer Percy, author of Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism

"A thrilling, brilliantly told, briskly paced adventure story that could not be more timely. In exploring the resilience of her Dutch parents, who survive fascinating childhoods--he, as a young boy in a Japanese concentration camp in Indonesia, she, as a young girl in a family persecuted by their fellow Dutch citizens for assisting their German oppressors--Mieke Eerkens asks what it means to be at once a victim, a colonist, and a collaborator. All Ships Follow Me is an important work of literary nonfiction and essential reading for Americans wondering about the responsibility they bear in the modern age. It's a book you'll read in one sitting but will be haunted by for years to come."--Kerry Howley, author of Thrown

"Setting her book within the chaotic and tragic aftermath of World War II, Mieke Eerkens has composed a provocative and beautiful story in All Ships Follow Me that boldly tightens its aperture on a single family's experience, and unflinchingly exposes the welts of history that can affect us all, and the inheritance of a sorrow we share."--John D'Agata, author of About a Mountain

"The confluence of conflicting war traumas fuels the emotional heart of Mieke Eerkens' insightful narrative. All Ships Follow Me is an excavation of the scars of war drawn from personal interviews, archival documents, and immersion in the physical and psychic spaces of the past. It is also an imaginative quest to understand how trauma influences generations, sometimes directly through behavioral quirks and aberrations but also through a vulnerability to sadness and the illusion of home."--Patricia Foster, author of All the Lost Girls

"A remarkable and unique portrait of inter-generational family trauma and collective guilt, All Ships Follow Me troubles the waters, in the most nuanced and moving fashion, of more conventional journeys of victimhood and good guys triumphing over bad guys. In no way an apologist for her father's side of the family, Dutch colonists of Indonesia for generations, or of her maternal grandfather's participation in fascist politics in wartime Holland, Eerkens nonetheless spares us excessive mea culpas. Instead, she takes an unflinching and riveting look at the complex histories of both sides of her family and the persistent if invisible legacies of World War II and colonialism that followed her to her childhood home in Southern California."--Robin Hemley, author of Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness

About the Author

MIEKE EERKENS teaches creative writing online for UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program and as a visiting instructor for the Iowa Summer Writing Program. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Creative Nonfiction, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Guernica, among others. She earned an M.A. in English from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She divides her time between Amsterdam and California. All Ships Follow Me is her first book.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B078X1XMGH
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador (April 2, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 2, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 28501 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 324 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1250117798
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 58 ratings

About the author

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Mieke Eerkens

Mieke Eerkens

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Mieke Eerkens teaches creative writing online for UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program and is a visiting instructor for the Iowa Summer Writing Program. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Creative Nonfiction, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Guernica, among others, as well as the anthologies Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts; The Book of Uncommon Prayer; Best Travel Writing 2011; and Water's Edge: Open to Interpretation. She earned a B.A. from San Francisco State University where she was the editor-in-chief of the lit journal, Transfer, an M.A. in English from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She divides her time between Amsterdam and California.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
58 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Cisca B
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2023
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Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book delivers unique insights into the ways war injures without prejudice and the ways in which it continues to injure long after the guns have been lowered. Mieke Eerkens' unflinching and thoughtful analysis resonated deeply with me, the grandchild of Opas and Omas who lived in The Hague during World War II, and with my extended family members. All Ships Follow Me is an important and timely book for anyone worried about the impact of wars going on today.
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Marieke
5.0 out of 5 stars A personal story seen in greater context.
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2019
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Just finished reading this book. Full disclosure I live in Davis and got to know her parents.
It is well written and researched and as it has many things in common with my life a fascinating view of all the issues I dealt with but thankfully not nearly as traumatic. Also I am a younger generation.
Grew up in New Guinea, the last Dutch colony , moved to Holland a country I was was not familiar with and lived in Apeldoorn! My school was next to the home Els was taken from and people knew exactly who had been “fout” in the war.
My grandparents were both born in Indonesia and my dad grew up there. So I grew up with stories from both sides.
I left Holland as soon as my education was finished with my husband and we lived in many countries including 6 years in Asia: Japan, Jakarta and Singapore filled with more history.
We ended up in Davis where I met a remarkable group of Dutch ladies, many traumatic war related stories to tell.
Els and Sjeff should be proud of their daughter who did not shy away from telling their story however painful it must have been. Many warnings for our current state of affairs are in order as “it cannot happen here “ is not good enough.
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Meredith Miskowich
5.0 out of 5 stars This book touches every nerve in a very loving way and it is about war.
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2020
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This book is the most honest, brave, compassionate study of the human impact and long-lived effects of war that I know of. It should be part of every history class at all military academies and places of learning everywhere. Her discussion of "victim vs. predator" is original, I believe, and again, I would love to see it openly and honestly dealt with. She talks about her struggle to begin the years of searching and research that were so difficult because she was uncovering family "secrets" which, though never revealed in her childhood, affected her entire life. This book touches every nerve in a very loving way.
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Bee
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Work of Art
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2019
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I could not put All Ships Follow Me down when it arrived in my Kindle queue last night. It is beautifully written, handling complex, complicated topics with an emotion and depth I rarely encounter. I cried, I laughed, I reflected on humanity both good and bad. At the end of the day today and with too little sleep last night from reading so long, I am left with a profound sense of compassion for others. Mieke Eerkens reminds me what a powerful art form writing is, making subjects like war and trauma digestible for others through her beautiful prose. This book has held me close and I am very grateful.
7 people found this helpful
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Brian Halma
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book with some great insights into WW2
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2021
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This is a gem of a book. Eerkens tells the story of her parents experience during WW2 and the years immediately following.
Her father was interned with his mother and other relatives during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies during WW2. At one point, the Japanese declared all boys over the age of 10 as men, and sent them to a new camp, meaning Eerkens father was separated from his mom as a pre-teen in a Japanese civilian internment camp. Eerkens looks to go deeper into the story - she researched and read accounts from other Dutch and Indonesian civilians during this period to help provide context and additional understanding for her dad's experience. She also took him back to Indonesia and flips between his time in the internment camp and his present day visit to the places he remembers. Eerkens could have had a pretty good, interesting book at this point, but she also chose to wade into some challenging areas - her father's experience during the Indonesian war for independence, and the complications of the Dutch as a colonial power in Indonesia.
Again, Eerkens could have had a nice book, but she chose to wade into a very challenging element of her family's history in WW2 - on her mother's side, her grandfather was a member of the NSB, the Dutch political party that aligned with the Nazis. This is a challenging topic, but Eerkens wades in and seeks to be very open about her family's experience. These are complicated, challenging areas to navigate, and Eerkens does a great job walking through different aspects of it. Part of this is exploring how much her grandfather was a collaborator - and reaching the frustrating conclusion that he was neither fully a collaborator nor going through the motions, but rather a very complicated relationship with the NSB - and discussing the painful experience of her mom and grandmother as the Dutch dealt with the NSB and Nazi collaborators.
In the process, Eerkens delivers a lot of insights into the WW2 experience - civilians interned in Japanese camps, the experiences of children during WW2, the post-war experience of former colonists, and the post-war experiences of children who had to grow up too fast during WW2. She also looks at how those experience not only shaped her parents and their family, but also her own generation.
To top it off, Eerkens is an excellent writer who structures the book in a way that enables the reader to connect well.
An excellent book that shares some insights into areas of WW2 and its aftermath that don't always see the attention they deserve.
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Lori A. Yeghiayan
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating read
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2019
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As someone who is interested in inherited trauma - particularly of war - I was fascinated by this book. Not only did it illuminate aspects of history I never knew, it broadened my view of both how far-reaching the impacts of war are and just how many victims it claims. I admire Ms. Eerkens ability to bring various scenes to life for the reader. I found her honesty about her own search for identity and sense of belonging refreshing and healing. I highly recommend this book!
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Bob and Nancy S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and compelling story
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2019
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I could not put this book down. It is beautifully written and weaves between the past and present seamlessly. Ms. Eerkens tells the history of parts of World War II with which I was not familiar and she tells stories that need to be told. Her thoughtful and wise insights into war and its generational legacy are profound and moving. But, for me, the compelling drive of the narrative make it a book I would highly recommend to anyone.
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Top reviews from other countries

Blue
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2019
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Love her creative non-fiction. So thrilled that her book has finally come out! -A big fan
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