REVISED 2026
Prepublication review: Counterculture Goddess is a masterly exercise in weaving the many strands of history ? religious, geographic, military, social, literary and political ? into a novel. They were tumultuous times, and you've brought out the difficulties for many people, particularly faithful Catholics, in finding their way through them.
By mocking her cherished goddess beliefs, Anneke van Engelen strikes deep enmity in Gerda van den Donker, both of whom live in Middelburg, the provincial capital of the Dutch province of Zeeland. She becomes nasty and jealous of her best friend, Nienke Nijboer, because she thinks that handsome, personable James Williamson prefers Nienke when they meet during a London Holiday. She is wrong. After she and Nienke return to Holland, she learns that James prefers her. She begins a relationship with James by correspondence, who, in the meantime, has left to visit his extended family in Sydney, Australia. (James Williamson leaves the story at this point and will be the central character in the next book of the Sixty Series.)
When Anneke and Nienke start university in Amsterdam in September 1966, studying English language and culture, they meet charming Wolter Langbroek and emotionally unstable but academically brilliant Luuk Rietveld, both senior students. Wolter is in his final year, and Luuk, for reasons he mysteriously won't reveal, is two years behind his friend.
Against the backdrop of the 1960s cultural revolution and the turmoil left by the Second Vatican Council in Holland, Anneke's and Nienke's relationships evolve: Anneke with Wolter, and Nienke with the brilliant but unstable Luuk. They are lured into the goddess movement through friends of fanatical Gerda, whose hatred of Anneke does not cool. Among Gerda's friends is supermodel Jannie de Kam, with whom Anneke and Nienke are also friends. All three came across Jannie four years before in 1962, while Jannie wandered among the dunes of Walcheren, burdened by a seemingly insurmountable problem.
Nienke must tame Luuk, and Anneke must resolve her two-timing with Wolter. She gets a taste of it herself when Katja van Amstel, a former girlfriend of Wolter's, walks back into his life. She must also deal with ferociously jealous Gerda, who accuses Anneke of undermining her relationship with Jannie. Their lives are further complicated by Wolter's relationship, as an economics advisor, with Roy Clark at the American Embassy in Den Haag, whom Luuk suspects is a CIA officer. By the end of 1967, the entanglement of relationships and the political intrigues have become explosive.
