The Opa Legacy

“Your lottery number has come up and you want me to take it. Come on, Harm, that is what you are saying, right? You want me to take your place in the military.” Willem Albert let his words hang in the air…the decision that changed forever the life of Willem Albert Van Komen.
The choice to take Harm Dykstra's military draft number in the 1880's Netherlands to avoid responsibility led Willem Albert on an odyssey of survival to the West Indies and back again, enduring typhoid, yellow fever, and the unexplained tragic death of a friend.
Upon his return to the Netherlands he finds a wife, a faith, and a family. Through all the trials and hardships of survival as a boatman, and a brick burner in the late 1800's his character is shaped and molded into a legacy worth passing on. This fictionalized history reveals the greatness and complexities of this man's understated life.