All Ships Follow Me

A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents

By: Mieke Eerkens

Narrated by: Mieke Eerkens

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.

©2019 Mieke Eerkens (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Mieke Eerkens has written a unique and harrowing account of the era through the history of her parents, and while deeply moving and brilliantly written, the particular backdrops give the story's flavor an air of ambiguity and controversy.... Eerkens' book provides a unique look at a different aspect of World War II, and it's a beautifully told story of an ambiguous situation."--PopMatters

"This memoir is honest, unflinching, reflective, and carefully researched. . . . Eerkens’s self-awareness and desire to honestly grapple with the history in front of her is worth every sentence. Reality is never an absolute, and truth is always messy."--Book Riot

"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

Wonderful,fascinating,insightful and moving

Eerkens sheds light on victims of war rarely considered with such respect and honesty. This is a really important read. Beautifully written and narrated, I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the human condition, family relations, or anyone curious about current affairs, history or relationships through generations and ages. Despite the epic nature of the topics addressed in this book the writing is personal and the reading surprisingly effortless. Highly, highly, highly recommend!

Could Not Stop Listening!

For anyone who has felt marginalized, "unseen", or confused by their own behavior, Mieke Eerkens offers reasons why that may be true through the history of her family trauma. Through no fault of their own, her parents were traumatized during WWII by means not known by most people. Eerkens and her siblings, are in turn, traumatized by their parents experiences of the war. Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, Eerkens seeks to understand the deeper story of her family and to hopefully break the pattern of familial trauma by giving it a voice. She presents a unique angle, marrying a rarely told historical account of war, with behaviors played out by the offspring of its passive participants. It left me in lasting deep thought about the traumas my own father must have suffered during WWII and those of my mother born into a secretive family where no one is interested in understanding the past in order to hit the reset button for the sake of future generations. Regardless of your own circumstances, you will most likely leave educated about rare and important events of WWII, coupled with self-reflection and a better understanding of yourself, friends, and family.

Totally Engrossing

Beautifully written story of parallel existence of two children on different continents during WWII. Eerkens examines a perspective of history that isn't taught in American schools. I walked away feeling like I too had spent time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Skillful depiction of times that echo current happenings. I highly recommend and am looking forward to reading this story myself.