Threads

About the Book

Johanna Cornelius Boonstra relates her life’s threads firsthand starting in Jakarta in 1916 and leading up to retirement in Florida. Her children and grandchildren encouraged her to write down the many stories she related to them over many years. The result of this effort, Threads, contains Johanna’s many stories and tales of growing up in Indonesia, avoiding the Germans while studying art in Holland during World War II, and starting a new life with a young family in America in 1961. Her stories mark the end of Dutch Colonialism in Indonesia, relate the brutality of the Germans in Holland, and describe the rigors of immigrating to a new country to start a new life and raise a family in America. Finally settling in Sanibel, Johanna Boonstra reflects on her life’s experiences in her collection of stories called Threads, illustrated by her own watercolors.

About the Author

Johanna Cornelius Boonstra was born in Djakarta in 1916 and spent her first 20 years there while her father rose to the rank of Captain in the Dutch East Army. Her family moved to Holland in 1936 and three years later experienced Dutch life under German occupation during World War II. She met her husband Bram before the war, and after 5 years of German occupation, she married and had a daughter, Ingrid, born in Delft in 1948. Bram landed a job in America in Boston, Massachusetts, and the young family moved to New England where her son Eric was born in 1952. Johanna and Bram raised their two children in Boston, and then retired to Florida. Johanna remained there and taught art to a few select students and friends out of her studio on Sanibel. Eight years after Bram died, she passed away from complications after a fall in January 2006, just before this book was to be published. Ingrid and Eric published this book for their mother to share her stories, fulfilling her wishes.