There is Always Tomorrow

About the Book

This autobiography is about a young Dutch woman who grabbed the chance to escape poverty, misery and an alcoholic father in her home country, only to find upon arrival in the steaming tropical jungles of the Dutch East Indies that she had exchanged one sort of hell for another with her hard drinking, abusive husband. They had two children, a boy and a girl. After a bitter divorce, when she almost lost custody of the boy, she married her second husband, with whom she had two more boys and six happy years until his tragic death in 1938. This is a story of despair and degradation, but also of hope and new beginnings; of misery and loneliness, but also of joy and love; of loss of innocence and betrayal but also of trust in the future and in the basic goodness in people.

About the Author

Sijtje Van Koedijk (1903 – 1989) was born in the Dutch province of North Holland from impoverished parent, one of seven children. While she was a good student, her father, a butcher and an alcoholic, did not see the need for education beyond elementary school for his daughters. From age twelve, she worked as a maid and servant. At seventeen , she saw her way out of misery and poverty and married a man whom she followed to the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, where she lived on and off for the next eighteen years. She returned to the Netherlands in 1938 after the tragic death of her second husband, survived the German occupation with her four children during World War II and wrote her memoirs at the age of 62.