Art, Exploration and Tulips

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The artistic careers of Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Frans Hals flourished during Netherlands' Golden Age, and their work has been given new attention by a number of recent historical novels. The foremost among these is Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) in which the young Griet becomes a maid in the Vermeer household, posing innocently for the seductive portrait of the title and arousing his wife's jealousy as a result.

The Witch of Cologne by Tobsha Learner
A sensuous Jewish midwife is persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition, a chief rabbi is forced to choose between his daughter and his people, and an inquisitor harbors a deeply personal reason for seeking the midwife's condemnation.

The Coffee Trader by David Liss
Although David Liss' The Coffee Trader (2003) is set primarily in Amsterdam, it is set firmly in the era of Dutch exploration and commerce. Having lost his fortune in the sugar markets, Miguel Lienzo — a canny trader from the city's Portuguese Jewish community — decides to take his chances on a new commodity, the bitter-tasting coffee bean. This intelligent thriller takes us from 1659 Amsterdam's primary trading centers to the back alleys of the city where business is secretly transacted. As is the case with the other novels described above, here the Netherlands is depicted as the cultural and economic capital of seventeenth century Europe — an exciting place and time to experience, both in person as well as for readers today.

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire's novel (1999) is an offbeat retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale, set in the seventeenth century city of Haarlem during the years of the tulip craze. The homely Iris Fisher is the protagonist and the ugly stepsister of the title; she has an artistic eye, however, and the ending will cause readers to reconsider what beauty really means.

Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach
Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever (1999) takes its name from the obsession that captured the attention of Netherlanders during the seventeenth century. Set in the 1630s during the height of tulip mania, this literary historical novel is a lush presentation of the era's art and culture. In the story, a young wife cuckolds her elderly husband with the artist asked to paint their portrait. As the romantic pair gamble their money on a get-rich-quick scheme involving tulip bulbs, they discover the consequences of their rash actions in more ways than one.

The Way of the Traitor: A Samurai Mystery by Laura Joh Rowland
Part of Rowland's mystery series featuring detective Sano Ichiro, The Way of the Trader is set in 1690, when Dutch trade was just beginning to penetrate Japanese markets. Relationships between the traders and the natives were not always smooth, however, which is why Sano suspects that the murderer of a rich Dutch merchant is most likely a Japanese native.

The Shadow King by Jane Stevenson
Balthasar Stuart, the son of Elizabeth of Bohemia and an African prince, works as a doctor in late seventeenth-century Holland, until he is driven out by the plague to build a new life in Restoration London and Barbados.

City of Dreams: A Novel of Early Manhattan by Beverly Swerling
Among Dutch ventures overseas, their settlement at New Amsterdam is perhaps the most familiar to Americans. Beverly Swerling's City of Dreams (2002) takes a comprehensive look at the experience of Dutch settlers in America and the early days of life in Manhattan. Lucas and Sally Turner, brother and sister, are both healers. This novel sees them and their descendants from their arrival in 1660s Nieuw Amsterdam through the American Revolution. Unlike many epic tales of a place, the characters in Swerling's novel are vivid and memorable, and their story intertwines with that of modern medicine.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) is about a fictional portrait of Vermeer's and its journey through Dutch history, as seen via chapters about its many owners from the seventeenth century until today.