Published today: 'Fortune's Children'

About Fortune's Children
Would anyone in San Francisco in 1875 have realized that the distinguished, wealthy Mrs. de Fremery had once been born a slave? And that as a child she had been smuggled to the Netherlands by her father because she was unsure of her life in her native America?

Annejet van der Zijl’s latest ‘big’ book, which includes her successful Dutch bookweek gift Leon & Juliette, is perhaps her most ambitious one ever. This true story starts with adventurer Leon Herckenrath who lost his heart to the young slave Juliette in 1818 and follows their eldest daughter and her Dutch husband during their adventures in California at the time of the Goldrush. And how did their descendants fare, with their unusual legacy of enormous wealth and a black bloodline?

Fortune’s children is a two-century-spanning, surprisingly timely family saga about people who did not let their lives be bounded by risk and their loves not by skin color.

About Annejet van der Zijl
Annejet van der Zijl (1962) is one of our country’s best-known and most widely read non-fiction writers. She made her debut in 1998 with Jagtlust, and wrote international bestsellers such as Sonny Boy and The American Princess. Van der Zijl was Book Week author in 2020 and wrote the successful Book Week gift Leon & Juliette.