The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette van Heugten
This novel begins with a violent scene in Houston, Texas, but we soon move to The Netherlands and find that the story has its origins there as well as its conclusion.
Nora is a pediatric intern who comes home from work one day to find her mother shot dead, a man she has never seen before dead as well, and her infant daughter missing. She can't think of who would do such a thing and her heart is torn between the loss of her mother and the worry over her daughter's welfare and whereabouts. The police find the man's hotel room with a false Dutch passport as his identification. Nora knows that her parents came from Holland after the war, but doesn't know of any current contacts of her mother from the country or what someone could want with her mother or daughter.
As Nora goes through her mother's possessions she finds old identification information for both her parents that seem to indicate they were on the side of the Nazis during the war and that her father may have murdered a Jew. Unable to sit and wait, Nora uses her own contacts in the Netherlands to access war history documents to try to find out if someone related to the murdered man may have enacted their revenge in this manner.
The story here is great, but the writing less so. Melodramatic in spots with quick changes in emotion and forced actions by the characters, this book could have been so much better with some helpful editing.
This sounds interesting - I hate it when a good story is bogged down by writing. I've had that happening a lot lately.
ReplyDeleteI have this book on my shelf and still want to read it, but I'm kind of bummed to hear that it's melodramatic and forced in spots.
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