The Dutch Wife

Ellen Keith

Sep 2018 · Harlequin Audio · Narrated by Abby Craden, Eric Martin, and Charlie Thurston

About this audiobook

A sweeping story of love and survival during World War II

AMSTERDAM, MAY 1943. As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or—for a chance at survival—to join the camp brothel.

On the other side of the barbed wire, SS officer Karl MŸller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever.

Woven into the narrative across space and time is Luciano Wagner’s ordeal in 1977 Buenos Aires, during the heat of the Argentine Dirty War. In his struggle to endure military captivity, he searches for ways to resist from a prison cell he may never leave.

From the Netherlands to Germany to Argentina, The Dutch Wife braids together the stories of three individuals who share a dark secret and are entangled in two of the most oppressive reigns of terror in modern history. This is a novel about the blurred lines between love and lust, abuse and resistance, and right and wrong, as well as the capacity for ordinary people to persevere and do the unthinkable in extraordinary circumstances.

Don’t miss THE DUTCH ORPHAN! Ellen's next riveting novel set about a woman who must choose between family loyalty and her own safety.

Ratings and reviews

Fun fact - 'Dutch wife' is a Japanese term for sex doll, likely owing to the fact that Dutch traders were the only Europeans allowed in Japan during most of the Tokugawa Shogunate. I unfortunately knew this before I encountered this novel, and I wish the author had known as well and chosen a different name.

About the author

Ellen Keith is the author of the bestselling novel The Dutch Wife. She has an undergraduate degree in history with a focus on WWII/Holocaust Studies from the University of Alberta, as well as an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She is originally from St. Albert, Canada, and currently lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.