When the Dikes Breached
When the Dikes Breached
The pale light creeping through the two skylights wakes me, and I realize that I must have dozed off. Now the new day begins. I immediately hear the roar of the storm, accompanied by the thunder of angry waves, which sound like the freight train barreling through Harbour Town, where I used to go to school.
I notice Father has fallen asleep sitting against the foot of the bed. Gently, I move Adriaan, drape the blanket around him, get up off the floor and walk over to one of the windows.
Oma is awake. "What do you see?" she whispers. Mother is still asleep, sitting beside Oma on the bed. They're both leaning on the wall, wrapped in blankets. I turn back to one of the skylights and, at first, I don't recognize anything. I blink my eyes to make sure what I can see is real and not a nightmare. The water has reached the eaves. Hills of manure float by. Bales of straw bob up and down. Tree branches, pieces of wood, buckets and barrels swirl in circles, then rush past.
My eyes try to find New Port. I can make out some of the rooftops, but the fields, pastures and road into town are gone. Telephone poles are the only indicators of where the road once was. The land before me has turned into one big sea.
Klara, the eldest of nine children, lives a very ordered and circumscribed life on her father's dairy farm on the island of Schouwen-Duivelend in Holland. Her days consist of chores, chores, and more chores now that she has left school, and, much as she loves her younger brothers and sisters, she is often impatient, wondering if there can't be more to life than this. Everyone, parents, friends, family, expect her to continue in this track until she gets married, probably to the son of the most prosperous farmer in the district (and handsome to boot!), after which the children she cares for will be her own (and Luuc's). Father's religion is Calvinism of the hellfire-and-brimstone variety, and, as the seas begin to rise with the extra high spring tides of 1953, there are several covert references of this being a punishment for Mother's "sins", though what these sins are is not made specific.
The high tides combined with gale-force winds from the northeast do, in fact, breach the dikes which are essential to Holland's very existence, and the village is inundated! (That this is a rather broad punishment for one persons "sins" is not mentioned.) The farm animals have to be set loose to take their chances in the rising waters, and the family retreats to the first floor, then the second, and ultimately the attic, taking with them what they can in the way of food and valuables. Several hungry days pass before a small rowboat, manned by a couple of fishermen from the coast, comes by and takes Mother (dangerously pregnant again), Oma, and the two smallest children to higher ground and safety. Later, a somewhat larger boat takes all the others, with the exception of Klara and one of her sisters. And then the rowboat returns for them at the insistence of one of the rowers, a dark-eyed youth who appears to be as struck with Klara as she with him. Love at first sight in the midst of chaos!
The rest of the book is a heartwarming saga of the outpouring of support for the displaced families, the volunteers who cared for them, and the general help offered by all, as well as Klara's growing disenchantment with Luuc and his autocratic overriding family, particularly his mother, along with, of course, her growing attachment to her rescuer-hero, Machiel.
Thankfully this story does not turn into a complete fairy tale. However, the situation is resolved fairly happily by the arrival of Father's brother Hendrik, returned from America where he had gone many years previously after a disastrously bitter family quarrel. His striking resemblance to Klara makes clear to them all just what Mother's "sin" had been! Faced with the apparent choice between marrying Luuc whom she does not love and who has been shown to be even more controlling and violent than Father, and the impossibility of marrying Machiel who is without the means to support a wife even had Father agreed to her marrying him, Klara throws herself on "Uncle" Hendrik's kindness, and he takes her back to America with him. There, he assures her, she can easily get work on the farm where he is general manager. Her appeal to Machiel, framed as "they fish Lake Michigan too", having failed, readers can only hope that she takes her birth father's advice, that she not "compare every American boy with Machiel but gives them a chance", will be taken, and she will, in fact, live happily ever after.
This is a long synopsis of a fairly simple story. The real interest lies in the background – the way of life in a rural backwater of Holland not all that long ago, the selfless ways in which people react when faced with ultimate disaster, their resilience and determination to rebuild their lives, and the generosity of the more fortunate. I was also struck by Father's humility, his acceptance of help, especially of the gifts of cows to rebuild his herd and feed for them. His pride might have stepped in here, and it didn't. Good for Father! Canada is unlikely to be drowned out, being a rather larger body of land, but wildfires can be as devastating, and older readers can draw their own analogies. Certainly When the Dikes Breached would be an excellent basis for meaningful discussion on a number of topics.
Mary Thomas is a retired library worker in elementary schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is a great fan of "faction", that combination of fiction and fact that makes history and science more palatable for upper-middle-year students.