What Readers Say
"People and action
right on the money."
"Hilarious. Jackie had me
laughing out loud."
"Fiction that serves history."
"Bawdy."
"Gets better and better ... toward a highly satisfying resolution."
"Authority beyond question."
"Jackie is real, engaging
and believable."
"Jackie, please, the grammer!"
"How lusty those Dutch are."
"Did they really drink that much?"
"Vivid descriptions all 'round."
"Authentic, flowing, dynamic."
Figures You'll Meet
in Mevrouw
Manhattan Buyer Peter Minuit
Pegleg Peter Stuyvesant
NY's First Whore Griet Reyniers
NY's First Embezzler
Cornelis van Tienhoven
Troublemaker Anthony the Turk
Indian-killer Willem Kieft
First Mother Catalina Trico
Dominies Michaelius, Bogardus and Megapolensis
Van Rennselaer Nephew
Wouter van Twiller
Adultress Nanne Beech
Kosher Butcher Asser Levy
Stuyvesant Foe
Adriaen van der Donck
First Gay Herman van den Bogaert
The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan
A Novel of New Amsterdam
Reviews
"[A] romp through the history of New Netherland that would surely have Petrus Stuyvesant complaining about the riot transpiring between its pages ... Readers are guaranteed a genuine adventure that will evoke the full range of human emotions. Once begun, they can expect to experience that rare difficulty in putting down a book before they have finished."
- de Halve Maen, Journal of the Holland Society of New York, Summer 2009
"Bill Greer has deftly blended fact and fiction in his humorous tale The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan. ... The characters are rowdy, raunchy, loveable, and sometimes despicable, but thoroughly believable. ... This is a thoroughly delightful story that brings the Dutch colonies to life."
- Historical Novels Review, August 2009
A Novel of New Amsterdam
When Mevrouw Jackie Lambert opens her New Amsterdam tavern in 1626, she jumps aboard a madcap ride through New York history. With a razor-sharp tongue and the tastiest beer on either side of the Atlantic, Jackie spurs the tiny Manhattan settlement toward a head-on collision with the tyrannical Dutchmen who rule it. Poison, blackmail, murder, all are fair game as she fends off threats to the family she yearned for growing up as an orphan. And when pegleg Peter Stuyvesant would rather destroy the town than surrender his honor, Jackie must take history into her own hands or lose everything she has spent a lifetime building.
A Real Portrait
While a work of fiction, The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan paints a real portrait of life in New Amsterdam with all its humor, bawdiness, and conflict. It presents a window into Dutch culture during the Golden Age of the Netherlands and how that culture transplanted to the wilderness of the Hudson Valley. It shows Indian life as the Dutch saw it. Real people and real events fill its pages. The thread of Jackie's life reflects the central theme of the Dutch period, the rebellion of the common people against their rulers, the Dutch West India Company and its Directors, a conflict historians argue laid the foundation for the pluralistic, freedom-loving society that America became.
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To explore more of New York and the World, wander through the Brownstone with me. - Bill
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