Tipping the Balance

Tipping the Balance was inspired by love for the author’s birth-place, Warnsveld in Gelderland’s De Achterhoek; the seasons, small farmlets with golden fields, the leafy lanes and rivers flowing slowly through the landscape. Jenneken’s life is shattered when she learns that her mother Alida’s knowledge and use of herbal remedies is considered to be witchcraft and that she must undergo a weighing trial in Oude- water. Jenneken fears also for her own safety as she has followed her mother’s teachings regarding the healing quality of flowers and herbs. Both mother and daughter experience persecution and after a hor-rific discovery realise that their lives are truly in danger. Their only option is to run for freedom. Where will they go? Will they survive?

‘Set at a time in history when women were persecuted for their knowledge and wisdom, Tipping the Balance is the entrancing story of the power of a mother and daughter to transcend injustice. Based on true occurrences and movingly written, this is a book which ex-poses ignorance but speaks also of the capacity of the human spirit to endure and to thrive.’ 

PADDY RICHARDSON (fiction writer, New Zealand)


Huberta Hellendoorn was born in The Netherlands in 1937 and emigrated to New Zealand in 1960. Her articles have been pub-lished in Dutch and New Zealand publications, and her short sto-ries have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand National and pub-lished in literary journals such as Sport and Takahe. Her poems have appeared in The Otago Daily Times.
In 2009 Huberta published The Madonna in the Suitcase, a book about her daughter with Down syndrome which was adapted for radio and broadcast on National Radio. Her memoir, Astride a Fierce Wind, was published by Makaro Press in May 2017.