Books

“I hope that Following Shadows, a WWII Family Saga, will transport readers into a different world, in order to
emerge changed.”

Janneke Jobsis Brown

A woman with glasses and curly hair working on a computer at a cluttered desk, with an open book in front of her.

What people are saying.

  • “It touched me greatly to ‘meet’ the Vanderveers, who slammed the door on these (war)years. As mind-blowing accounts of true history and suffering are revealed, a beautiful bridge is formed: spanning three generations of a family saying what many who experienced these times, wish they could.”

    — Jan A. Krancher The Defining Years of the Dutch East Indies, 1942-1949,
    Editor and Author

  • One of the Best Books of 2015—Kirkus Reviews “Following Shadows takes the reader on a family’s around the world journey. Flashbacks from the father’s boyhood years spent in Japanese concentration camps during WWII are masterfully woven into the present dynamics of the family drama. The daughter’s quest to understand and unravel the past helps her to explore her present-day struggles, bringing her closer to her seemingly distant but loving father.”

    — Azadeh Tabazadeh, The Sky Detective
    NASA Scientist and Author

  • “Reading through the story of several generations of Vanderveers, from the Dutch Indies in World War II to Texas fifty years later, with many stops in between, is like reviewing a case of multi-generational war trauma. We can see how the initial internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp sheds its repercussions down to the present. Janneke Jobsis Brown has woven together love and war and loss superbly, to not only offer us a fine historical novel, but she has also shown how a single person’s psychological trauma carries us forth into the lives of several generations.”

    — Lewis Aptekar, Ph.D, In the Lion’s Mouth, Author, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, Counselor Education