Overview

When Bea meets Erica at the home of a mutual friend, this chance encounter sets the stage for the story of two women torn between desire and taboo in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Erica, a reckless young journalist, pursues passionate but abusive affairs with different women. Bea, a reserved secretary, grows increasingly obsessed with Erica, yet denial and shame keep her from recognizing her attraction. Only Bea's discovery that Erica is half-Jewish and a member of the Dutch resistance--and thus in danger--brings her closer to accepting her own feelings.First published in 1955 in the Netherlands, Dola de Jong's The Tree and the Vine was a groundbreaking work in its time for its frank and sensitive depiction of the love between two women, now available in a new translation.

Full Product Details

9781945492341

Table of Contents

Reviews

De Jong makes her narrator a real person, the plain woman over thirty, who does not want to recognize her nature and has brief, dutiful, joyless affairs with men. Therefore, she is always lonely; her little affections and pleasures will never change that. She is not aware of the barrenness of her existence. This silence, this refusal to see, is very touching, and is delicately rendered. --V.S. Naipaul, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature This is a compelling little book, beautiful and sensitive. It is something one must read at a single sitting once it is begun, which is why this little gem had to be published. --The Statesman This compelling novel allows us entry into a world in which the word lesbian is unspeakable and to be a Jew is unspeakably dangerous. --Evelyn Torton Beck, editor of Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology A masterful depiction of the love of two women, one of whom loves without understanding her own sensuality, while the other indulges in passions with little concept of love. --Johan P. Snapper, University of California, Berkeley

Author Information

Dola de Jong (19112003) was born Dorothea Rosalie de Jong in Arnhem, The Netherlands. She worked as a dancer and a reporter before she fled the country in 1940. Settling first with her husband in Tangiers, she immigrated to the United States. She was the author of sixteen books for adults and children, including The Tree and the Vine and The Field, which won the City of Amsterdam Literature Prize in 1947.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available