Simone van der Vlugt © Merlijn Doomernik

★★★

Recently widowed, Catrin Barentsdochter is a free woman again at the age of 25 and vows that 1654 will finally be her year of change. She’s tired of working the land and amusing herself by painting decorative furniture in her spare time. She wants nothing more than to escape the claustrophobic parochialism of her little village, De Rijp, and make a new life for herself in the nearby town of Alkmaar. However, when an unexpected meeting leads to an offer of work in distant Amsterdam, Catrin realises that the scope of her world might be wider than she ever dreamed.

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