The Winter Garden by Johanna Verweed

First published:De wintertuin, 1995 (English translation, 2001)

Edition(s) used:The Winter Garden, translated by Helen Richardson-Hewitt. Bloomington, Minn.: Bethany House, 2001

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Literary fiction

Core issue(s): Grace; guilt; healing; reconciliation; responsibility; self-knowledge; truth

Principal characters

• Ika “Ikabod” Boerema, the protagonist
• Nelly Boerema de Haan, Ika’s mother
• Dirk de Haan, Ika’s stepfather
• Nelly Peters-de Haan, Ika’s younger sister
• Willem Peters, Nelly’s husband
• Abe Peters, Nelly and Willem’s older son
• Dirk-Willem Peters, Nelly and Willem’s younger son
• Grandfather de Haan, Ika’s maternal grandfather
• Granddad Boerema, Ika’s paternal grandfather
• Klaar de Haan, Ika’s aunt
• Bart Hogerveer, a boy who introduces Ika to gardening
• Mr. Molenaar, Ika’s grade-school teacher
• Dr. Spaan, Ika’s mother’s doctor
• Mrs. Wamers, the district nurse
• Simone Berger, Ika’s friend and employer, owner of Berger’s Landscape Gardening

Overview

In The Winter Garden, Johanna Verweerd relates the story of Ika Boerema’s personal growth, juxtaposing events of the past and present to highlight significant events. Ika’s life has been shaped by her memories of a narrow sphere of childhood circumscribed by her mother and stepfather’s bitterness toward and resentment of her, an illegitimate child; Grandfather Boerema’s oft-repeated references to his fallen daughter; and the villagers’ collective antipathy toward Ika, the evidence of Nelly Boerema’s youthful indiscretion.

It has been fifteen years since Ika Boerema left her family and hometown. During that time, she and her younger sister Nelly have corresponded sporadically through letters. Ika’s stepfather died some time ago, but Ika did not attend the funeral. Nelly has married and has two sons, Abe and Dirk-Willem. Ika is living in the city and has been working as a landscape designer for some time. Into her well-ordered life comes a letter from Nelly, bearing the news that their mother is terminally ill with lung cancer and dragging the past back to envelop Ika in an almost paralyzing cloud of anxiety.

To begin dealing with the situation and her own complicated relationship with her family, Ika turns to her friend and employer, Simone Berger, owner of Berger’s Landscape Design. Although Simone says that Ika’s family members do not deserve her friend’s sympathy, she does suggest that Ika contact Dr. Spaan, her mother’s doctor. When Ika does, the doctor uses her given name, Ikabod, which means “shame,” and reminds her that her mother had chosen this name for her.

Ika begins designing a winter garden for the Promenade Hotel, a project that will sustain her as she struggles to reconcile the past with the present and to forge a new personal understanding. She remembers the baby turtledove she rescued years ago and suddenly needs to know if the dove still lives at her mother’s house; its presence seems to assure her of a comforting link with the past and a promise for the future. A secret visit to see her mother, the refuge Ika takes in creating the plans for the winter garden, and the dove’s presence at her mother’s house enable Ika to commit to reconnecting with her family and staying with her mother to the end. Of increasing importance is the possibility that her mother might at last reveal the identity of Ika’s father.

After returning to her mother’s house, Ika learns she must let others into her experience and that life at her old home will never be as it was during her childhood. Although Ika and Nelly cautiously dip into the past and begin forging a new adult relationship as sisters, it is Abe, Nelly’s teenage son, with whom Ika finds a special bond in their similar sense of humor and love for gardening and Granddad de Haan’s farm. Ika quickly begins to learn what the physical demands of her mother’s illness will be and what her mother’s dying will require of her emotionally and spiritually.

While caring for her mother, Ika works on her design for the winter garden and tries to find a new understanding of her life and her future. Although she presses her mother for information about her biological father, her mother refuses to reveal anything about him. Her mother’s illness reaches a crisis one day, and Dr. Spaan warns Ika and Nelly that they must be prepared for her death. During that long dark night, the two sisters watch over their mother as the reality of her imminent death sinks into both of them and draws them together.

Ika continues to struggle with the memories of her mother’s coldness to her as a child and her growing desperation to have her questions about her father answered. In the end, though, those are not the things that matter in her relationship with her mother; Ika finds she and her mother are both in need of the same thing, to heal from the past and to look with faith to the future. For Ika’s mother, the future comes on an afternoon following a visit by Nelly, Willem, and their two boys. To shield her mother from winds caused by military planes flying low over the house, Ika wraps her mother in her arms. At that moment, her mother dies, and in the silence after, the dove calls seven times.

The formalities of the funeral follow. Nelly’s will causes some strife when it is discovered that she has left a prized red coral necklace to Ika, who promptly gives it to the complaining Nelly. In their mother’s note, Ika learns that her former grade-school teacher, Mr. Molenaar, has been asking after her. She goes to visit him and learns the truth about her parentage, that Dirk de Haan, the man she called father all her life was, in fact, her biological father, and that the circumstances of her parents’ courtship had been dictated by her Grandfather Boerema, the village minister, on discovering his daughter’s disgraceful actions and condition.

Even before learning the answers to all her questions, Ika returns to the city to complete her design for the winter garden. Simone, who has been a steadfast friend from the beginning, announces that although Berger’s Landscape Design will provide the design and construction for the winter garden, the maintenance contract has been given to a company from Ika’s hometown, the Morning Star, whose owner happens to be Bart Hogerveer, the boy who helped Ika start her own first garden. For lonely Ika, the reunion with her old friend is the best of steps toward her new future.

Christian Themes

The Winter Garden reflects Verweerd’s Reformed Christian perspective, thematically and symbolically. Ika’s journey from a childhood marked by her mother’s sin to personal growth and recognition of grace in her own life drive the spiritual arc of the novel. At the heart of the narrative lie the need for reconciliation and expiation of sin, and these themes are represented through the opposition of two Scriptural verses.

Samuel 4:19-22 recounts the Israelites’ loss of the ark of the covenant and the naming of a child, Ichabod, “the glory is departed.” Choosing such a name for her illegitimate daughter serves as a perpetuating self-punishment for Nelly de Haan, especially given her minister father’s condemnation and the disapproval of the village.

Ika finds solace in prayer and reading the Scriptures, particularly the consolatory verses of Isaiah 43, the assurance of the constancy of Christ. It is these lines that give her strength to confront her mother’s illness and stubbornness and bring the two women together in a moment of understanding and forgiveness. When Nelly de Haan dies in Ika’s arms, they are the first words her daughter whispers.

The dove symbolizes the constancy of Christ and serves as a reminder of the possibility of grace, negotiating the two Scriptural verses that bookend Ika’s relationship with her mother. The bird also keeps her company as she designs the winter garden that represents a mother holding a baby in her arms, the final image of emotional and spiritual reconciliation of the novel.

Sources for Further Study

“Joke Verweerd.” Gale Literary Databases: Contemporary Authors. 2002. Provides biographical information and discusses her two novels, A Winter Garden and Paradiso (2001). Highlights are excerpted from an interview with the author on attaining forgiveness and the parallel growth of the author and her characters.

Mort, John. Review of The Winter Garden. Booklist 97, no. 22 (August, 2001): 2088. A brief review of the work that finds it a “fine, subtle story.”

Zaleski, Jeff. Review of The Winter Garden. Publishers Weekly 248, no. 14 (April 21, 2001): 38-40. Zaleski’s brief review effectively evaluates the book and provides a thoughtful consideration of the way it negotiates the impact of the past through flashbacks.