lotgevallen van Ferdinand Huyck

A young man's return to 18th-century Netherlands becomes a dangerous game of secrets and love. Ferdinand Huyck, son of Amsterdam's chief magistrate, has barely set foot on Dutch soil before he's robbed by highwaymen near Naarden. Rescued by the mysterious Bos, a man with a beautiful daughter and a secret past, Ferdinand finds himself bound by a promise he cannot break. When the woman he loves, Henriette Blaek, sees him in the company of another woman, and when his own father begins to suspect his behavior, Ferdinand must navigate a maze of deception, all while pirates, shipwrecks, and murder close in around him. Jacob van Lennep's masterpiece swashbuckles through 18th-century Holland with the verve of a page-turner and the heart of a romantic tragedy. This is adventure fiction at its most generous: a story that delivers highwaymen and shipwrecks, humor and heartbreak, without ever losing sight of its characters' tender, tangled hearts. The novel asks what happens when keeping one promise means breaking another, when honor and love point in opposite directions.