“The Mastmakers’ Daughters” is now available in English, worldwide at:  

https://www.createspace.com/4077181

in print. This is the Self Publishing subsidiary of Amazon.com, where it will also be available, in a week or so, for the same $14.50 plus shipping. But I urge you to buy it from Create Space because the royalty is twice as much for me at Create Space. And I need the money, always, sothat I can continue to afford my vagabond life.

The KINDLE (E-Book version) will also be available on Amazon.com at $ 7.50 and I will give the link in the next day or so. The Print version is in Black and White only. It turned out that for the about 10 full color pictures the price would have gone to over $40 per book. The rest of the total 50 or so photos and illustrations were already Black and White or were converted from Sepia. In the Dutch print version there was very little difference between the full color and B&W version. In E-book you will have all in full color, since there is no cost difference.

The book will most likely not be widely available in book stores. I am not using a Publisher at all. This was a very tedious learning process. I was ready to throw my self to the many services that do this for a living, but I am happy with the result and it will most likely not be the last time that you’ll get a chance to make me come for your money.

The web site for the book www.TheMastmakersDaughters.us has additional information and is ready to visit, but will need further work. You will be able to watch a slide show of all the photographs and illustrations of the book in full color, and I will add some more for a bonus, with text. It will also be a platform to leave comments and add any useful information on the subject for future improvements.

A similar web site is in preparation for the Dutch version as www.DeMastmakersdochters.nl

The Mastmakers’ Daughters

Authored by Jack van Ommen

The Mastmakers’ Daughters are cousins. They have the same name: Rennie de Vries. Our main character grows up above her father’s mastmaker shop in a small seaport on the Zuiderzee. Her three year younger cousin grows up in Germany where her father started a mastmaker business. Rennie joins Hitler’s Nazi party. Our Rennie ends up in the 2nd World War Resistance. The young mother is arrested by the Germans. The story follows her through Dutch prisons and concentration camps Vught and Ravensbrück until the interception by the American 7th Army on her Death March out of Dachau. The author managed to reconstruct one of the first complete accounts of the 200 Dutch women of the “AGFA-Kommando”. These courageous women stood united to survive the horror. They prayed, sang, cried and laughed together. Rennie remembers their secret religious exercises with Corrie and Betsie ten Boom. Van Ommen discovered a number of misconceptions and some shocking facts about the heroes and villains in the Resistance. The book also follows the Nazi Rennie after she flees Holland when the Third Reich begins to collapse. Rennie’s husband kept a diary from the time of his arrest until Rennie’s safe return. He received one of the first issues of the “Diary of Anne Frank” from Otto Frank. The first part is based on Rennie’s memoirs. It is a very personal account of her experiences in a small seaport, when the fishing and commercial fleet moved by sail and muscle, before running water and electricity. Rennie embraces the emancipation and is one of the founding members of the Dutch equivalent of our YWCA. Most of all, this is Rennie’s affirmation of her gratitude to be a child of God.