Modern Software Experience

2018-09-10

Pilgrim fiction

Pilgrim facts

There are many books about the Mayflower Pilgrims. Most of these merely regurgitate other books, but a few are really worth having. For a small decade now, the book to have is one by Jeremy Bangs, Leiden citizen and director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum. His magnum opus, Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojouners; Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation is the results of a lifetime of research by an American historian who took the trouble to learn Dutch, and can now read centuries old documents that Dutch researchers find challenging. This book is published by the Mayflower Society.

Pilgrim fiction

It is not very surprising that the world's leading Pilgrim scholar lives in Leiden. What may surprise you, what certainly isn't very well known yet, is that Leiden has inspired Pilgrim fiction: fiction books based on Pilgrim history.

Some of my Dutch readers my recognise the name Hubertus Jacobus "Bert" Trap. He was born in Leiden, and has been chairman of Nederlandse Genealogische Vereniging (Dutch Genealogical Society). He not only wrote serious articles about the Pilgrims, he also wrote Pilgrim fiction.
Bert Trap's fiction is inspired by his ancestor John Trap, a separatist with descendants in Leiden. In his book 1997 novel En zij werden tot een Groot Volk (And They became a Great People) John Trap is called John Gray and joins the famous Mayflower voyage, while in fact he did not; John Trap stayed behind. It is not impossible to mistake this novel for a biography, because a lot of the story does fit the facts, but it is fiction.

Jeroen Windmeijer

Jeroen Windmeijer is a Leiden citizen, anthropologist and school teacher who debuted as an author in 2005. His first book, De Bekentenissen van Petrus (The Confessions of Petrus) was originally published by the Primavera Pers, a Leiden publisher, but he's now with HarperCollins, and English translations of his books are being worked on.

His latest book, Het Pilgrim Fathers Complot (The Pilgrim Fathers' Conspiracy) completes a trilogy of thrillers:

All three books feature archaeology professor Peter de Haan as the protagonist unravelling the mysteries.

fiction

These books are fiction, and I am not stressing that fact without reason. The labyrinth in the second title of the series is a fictional maze of passageways below Leiden. During a presentation about his latest book in a Leiden book store, he told the audience that he receives emails from people asking whether these tunnels are open for the public.

It amuses Jeroen Windmeijer that he can point to a random house in Leiden and say one of the characters lived there, while the character in question is just someone he made up. If you're interested in such things, you can download free documents from his website, one for each book, detailing a walk through Leiden along places of interest. You can even sign up for a walk with the author, the Dan Brown of the Low Lands as your guide.

the manuscript

Het Pilgrim Fathers Complot starts with a murder in the Leiden freemasonry lodge and the discovery of an old Pilgrim manuscript. There is no such manuscript, yet people may continue to ask the Leiden Archive to view it for a long time, not in the least because of how Jeroen Windmeijer started the promotion of this book.

To promote the book, Jeroen Windmeijer staged the discovery of the document together Piet van Vliet, author of Voor de Grote Oversteek (Before the Great Crossing), a book published by the Leiden Tourist Information. They posed for a photograph in the archive, holding up a random book as the book they found the ostensible document in. De Leydenaer ran an interview with the two men, titled Uniek Pilgrimdocument ontdekt in gemeentearchief (Unique Pilgrim Document discovered in Municipal Archive), complete with the suggestive photo.


Piet van Vliet (left) and Jeroen Windmeijer (right).

This article tells the reader that they decided that it would be better for Jeroen Windmeijer to publish the document in his new book, then for Piet van Vliet to write an article for a specialised journal, as the book would reach a much wider audience.
Interested readers were invited to sign up for a lecture about the document a few days later, on April 1. That day, De Leydenaer published 100 lezers trappen in 1-aprilgrap (100 readers fall for April Fool's Joke), reporting that almost 100 readers signed up for the lecture.

The hidden manuscript of The Pilgrim Father's Conspiracy is fiction.

Leiden

The English translation of the trilogy, including Het Pilgrim Fathers Complot (The Pilgrim Fathers' Conspiracy), may be in bookstores soon. If you like novels by Dan Brown, the Jeroen Windmeijer of the New World, you're likely to like this trilogy.

Although the trilogy is inspired by facts, and some things in there are true, it's still fiction. There is no secret labyrinth under the city of Leiden. The hidden manuscript of The Pilgrim Father's Conspiracy is fiction.
The simple truth is that Leiden, the city of the Pilgrims, inspires both Pilgrim scholarship and Pilgrim fiction. That's a Pilgrim fact.

updates

2018-09-10: St Paul’s Labyrinth available

St Paul’s Labyrinth, the English translation of the second book in the series, became available a few days ago.

links

 

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