TAP Review: The Watchmaker’s Daughter: The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom

By Larry Loftis

William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins 2023

Reviewed by Sue Careless

I MUST CONFESS that I had not heard the term “historical espionage thriller” before, but now that I have read The Watchmaker’s Daughter, it applies perfectly. Larry Loftis’ book is a page-turner – you can’t put it down but it is also historically accurate. This is not historical fiction but the true story of a remarkable Christian woman, Corrie ten Boom. 

Corrie wrote no less than six books between 1947 and 1978 but The Hiding Place (1971), written with – or some would say by – John and Elizabeth Sherrill, was the most popular. It was based on her first book, A Prisoner and Yet but it covers only a fraction of her life. 

Loftis, an historian of World War II in Europe, is able to give a broader context to Corrie’s life. She never kept a wartime diary but Loftis relies on some in her circle who did. He was also able to draw on Corrie’s entire collection of letters, photos, passports, scrapbooks and notes stored in the Billy Graham Archives at Wheaton College. Many of the photos are published in his book.   

Loftis includes quotes from Anne Frank and Audrey Hepburn, two young women living just miles away from Corrie during the brutal German occupation of Holland. Some of the BBC broadcasts of Queen Wilhelmina, who was exiled in London, are quoted and reference is made to SOE agent Odette Sansom who was tortured in the same SS concentration camp for women as Corrie, the infamous Ravensbrück. 

The narrative moves quickly but strategic footnotes give more details when warranted. And there are an additional 150 pages of notes and bibliography. 

The title is true – as far as it goes. Corrie was the daughter of the most famous Dutch watchmaker of his generation, but she herself was the first licensed female watchmaker in Holland so the book could have been titled The Watchmaker Heroine.   

Corrie and her family were devout Christians whose faith led them to hide both Jews and Dutch resistance fighters in their home in Haarlem. A hiding place that could fit six people, if some stood, was devised at the back of the top floor. That meant if a secret alarm was sounded in the ground floor shop, the boarders who lived upstairs would have time to hide before the Gestapo searched all the rooms below.      

While the book details some of the daring feats of the Dutch resistance, including the rescue of hundreds of Jewish infants, the book is certainly not for the fainthearted. The ominous escalation of Nazi atrocities in occupied Holland and the full-blown evil unleashed in Ravensbrück are chilling.

Corrie is interred there with her gentle sister Betsie. But rather than falling into utter despair in such a wretched hellhole, they minister to and evangelize the women in their crowded, lice-infested barracks. 

Eventually Corrie is set free by clerical error (she was to have been executed a week later with all the women over 50 in the camp). But instead of simply returning to her beloved home and trade, she recognizes that even those who physically survived the war are suffering from trauma and need further emotional and spiritual healing. She developed three convalescent centres which helped thousands rebuild their lives. 

Corrie and other Dutch victims found the hardest people to forgive were not the Germans but those who had personally betrayed them. Yet remarkably Corrie opens her Haarlem home to these Dutch traitors whom nobody loves, and tries to show them Christ’s amazing grace and forgiveness.   

Then even in her old age she travels not only all over Europe but worldwide, visiting more than 60 countries sharing God’s grace and good news.   

After the war, Queen Wilhelmina’s daughter, Queen Juliana, knighted Corrie, while streets in Haarlem and Hilversum were named after Corrie, her father Casper and her nephew, Kik ten Boom. And in 2007 Corrie, Betsie and their father were all inducted into Israel’s Righteous Among the Nations.   

New York Times bestselling author Loftis has written three other historical spy thrillers, including Code Name Lise, a biography of Odette Sansom, who became WWII’s most highly decorated spy. It was while researching Sansom that Loftis came across Corrie ten Boom’s faith-based heroism.   

Whether you have read all six of Corrie’s own books or none, The Watchmaker’s Daughter is well worth your time.   TAP