In Search of a Name

A Novel

Marjolijn van Heemstra, Jonathan Reeder

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781982100483
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982100506
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This spellbinding and intimate novel explores the burden of legacy as a young woman wrestles with discoveries that contradict her great-uncle’s supposed heroism during World War II.

D says that a name always fits in the end, that a name is like a leather shoe that forms itself to the foot.

But in my mind, it’s the other way around: a person grows into his name.

Marjolijn van Heemstra has heard about her great-uncle’s heroism for as long as she can remember. As a resistance fighter, he was the mastermind of a bombing operation that killed a Dutch man who collaborated with the Nazis, and later became a hero to everyone in the family.

So, when Marjolijn’s grandmother bestows her with her great-uncle’s signet ring requesting that she name her future son after him, Marjolijn can’t say no. Now pregnant with her firstborn, she embarks on a quest to uncover the true story behind the myth of her late relative. Chasing leads from friends and family, and doing her own local research, Marolijn realizes that the audacious story she always heard is not as clear-cut as it was made out to be. As her belly grows, her doubts grow, too—was her uncle a hero or a criminal?

Vivid, hypnotic, and profoundly moving, In Search of a Name explores war and its aftermath and how the stories we tell and the stories we are told always seem to exist somewhere between truth and fiction.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• 1: Epigraph
• Chapter 1: 27 Weeks Left
• Chapter 2: 26 Weeks Left
• Chapter 3: 25 Weeks Left
• Chapter 4: 24 Weeks Left
• Chapter 5: 23 Weeks Left
• Chapter 6: 22 Weeks Left
• Chapter 7: 21 Weeks Left
• Chapter 8: 20 Weeks Left
• Chapter 9: 19 Weeks Left
• Chapter 10: 18 Weeks Left
• Chapter 11: 17 Weeks Left
• Chapter 12: 16 Weeks Left
• Chapter 13: 15 Weeks Left
• Chapter 14: 14 Weeks Left
• Chapter 15: 13 Weeks Left
• Chapter 16: 12 Weeks Left
• Chapter 17: 11 Weeks Left
• Chapter 18: 10 Weeks Left
• Chapter 19: 9 Weeks Left
• Chapter 20: 8 Weeks Left
• Chapter 21: 3 Weeks Left
• Chapter 22: 2 Weeks Left
• Chapter 23: 1 Week Left
• Chapter 24: 3 Days Left
• Chapter 25: 2 Days Left
• Chapter 26: 1 Day Left
• Chapter 27: The Day
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright