Call Upon the Water

July 15, 2019
Historical fiction that deftly weaves engineering marvels, love, optimism, and tragedy against the backdrop of war and tensions in the mid-17th-century Old and New Worlds. Jan Brunt is a Dutch engineer hired in 1649 for a mammoth project to drain 500 square miles of land in England. The successful project will create wealth and riches for a group of so-called Gentlemen Adventurers by creating arable land from wetlands, or fens, where salt and fresh water compete with each other daily for mastery. But doing so means the destruction of that natural world and the livelihoods of those who live within it. As Jan begins his work on the Great Level--as it is called--Eliza arrives in his life, emerging from the fens. Jan and Eliza are two people who are perfectly complete as and by themselves, yet they find joy in each other. This book is about memories and about love: of place, of person, of things well made, of partners well cherished. It is also about survival. The locations--from the orderly streets of the Netherlands to the wild fens of England tamed by engineering, the swampy shorelines of Virginia thick with cypress trees and the burgeoning cityscape of New York-to-be--are so finely wrought by author Tillyard (Tides of War, 2011, etc.) that they will embed themselves in your mind as distant places your thoughts return to wistfully, as if you yourself have traveled there. But as much as this story is one of optimism, tragedy is still prevalent: wildlands, families, bodies, engineering marvels, all are destroyed in time. But everything can be rebuilt, and for Jan, it is in memories, hard work, and future possibilities that he finds joy. A dense, delightful read.

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August 30, 2019

A Dutchman with the soul and skills of an engineer, Jan Brunt takes a job draining the fens of Ely in mid-17th-century England. There he falls in love with an enigmatic Englishwoman named Eliza, yet both work and love fail spectacularly, and he wanders off to Nieuw Amsterdam to practice his trade and think about that woman who sabotaged his opportunity in Britain. Eliza, on the other hand, is arrested, indentured, and sent to Virginia, where she insinuates herself into a wealthy family and puts to use what she learned of controlling land and water from Jan. Eventually, Eliza becomes mistress of the plantation and the object of much attention, if still mysterious in her ways. The story ends in the newly named New York some years later, with Jan and Eliza aware of each other, wondering if their love is still there. VERDICT Historian and author (Tides of War) Tillyard's lyrical novel aptly recounts the dour days of Cromwell, the promise of the Restoration Era, and everyday life during those times, offering something for history buffs and romantics alike.--W. Keith McCoy, Somerset Cty. Lib. Syst., Bridgewater, NJ

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