The Counterculture Goddess

Prepublication review: Counterculture Goddess is a masterly exercise in weaving the many strands of history – religious, geographic, military, social, literary and political – into a novel. They were tumultuous times, and you've brought out the difficulties for many people, particularly faithful Catholics, in finding their way through them. Anneke van Engelen strikes deep enmity in Gerda van den Donker by mocking her goddess beliefs. She becomes nasty and jealous of her best friend, Nienke Nijboer, whom she thinks handsome, personable James Williamson prefers when they meet during a London Holiday. She is wrong. James prefers her, and they start a relationship by correspondence when she and Nienke return to Holland. When Anneke and Nienke start university in Amsterdam in 1966, they meet good-looking Wolter Langbroek and emotionally unstable Luuk Rietveld. Against the backdrop of the 1960s sexual revolution and the turmoil left by the Second Vatican Council in Holland, Anneke's and Nienke's relationships evolve, Anneke with Wolter and Nienke with unstable Luuk. They are drawn into the goddess movement, along with Gerda, whose hatred of Anneke has not cooled. Nienke must tame Luuk and Anneke must resolve her two-timing with Wolter. She gets a taste of it herself when Katja van Amstel, a former girlfriend of Wolter's, walks back into his life. Their lives are further complicated by Wolter's relationship, through his job as an economics advisor, with Roy Clark, whom Luuk suspects of being a CIA officer. By the end of 1967, the entanglement of relationships and the political intrigues become explosive.