The Safekeep is a Dutch historical fiction novel written by Yael van der Wouden. It was published by Avid Reader Press courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
In 1961, just outside of Amsterdam, Isabel van der Brave is one of three children who is now essentially a recluse living at a large house her family moved into shortly after World War II. When her younger brother, Louis, asks that his new girlfriend, a typist named Eva de Haas, stay with Isabel for a month while he goes out of town for a work conference, Isabel is furious and becomes obsessed with Eva’s every move. Meanwhile, the tension between them transforms into a surprise attraction; this blossoming romance threatens to alter the lives of two families in unexpected ways.
This entry will focus on the character of Eva de Haas. Eva is attractive, smart, observant, fashionable and spontaneous, funny, and can be unexpectedly kind. She is a fully-developed character far beyond her bisexuality. She has her own mind, sense of agency, hopes, dreams, and fears. She is also not without her flaws — at times she can be manipulative, conniving, and even harsh. However, considering the very particular circumstances of how these qualities become necessary for her in the course of the novel, they can be understandable; though Isabel starts off with a harsher lens, it is clear the author holds a ton of empathy for Eva and her particular, delicate situation.
In Chapter 5, after Isabel has made many overtures of dislike towards Eva (but still observes her relentlessly), the ice between the two women melts in surprising ways. In one critical passage, Eva explains some of her experience with past male lovers to Isabel (who has had no relationships). Isabel has just come home from a reluctant date with her neighbor, Johan, who tried to kiss her at the end of the night. The scene ends with a kiss between the women that, in the following days, leads to them igniting a passionate, sexual, and emotionally intense and complex relationship.
When Isabel admits that she is unsure how to know whether she wants to kiss someone, Eva tells her that sometimes the only way to find out is to try. She kisses Isabel lightly to prove her point, but the moment quickly becomes more intense, with Eva kissing her again and touching her shoulders and chest. Although Eva tries to explain the encounter by saying that Isabel resembles her brother, her actions make her attraction to Isabel difficult to dismiss.
Later in the novel, Isabel snoops and reads part of Eva’s private diary, which reveals an inventory of things around the house Eva has been stealing, and kicks Eva out of the house without getting an explanation. Isabel then reads the rest of the diary, where she discovers that Eva is Jewish and that her family was ousted empty-handed from the very house that Isabel now lives in by the Nazis. Eva’s father died in a concentration camp and, thus, could not pay the mortgage on the house, so the bank re-sold the house after the war to Isabel’s family. As a teenager in the postwar years, Eva and her mother came back to the house to try to reclaim it, but were turned away by Isabel’s mother. Eva’s mother passed a few years later from medical complications from also staying in the camps.
In the months before the beginning of the novel, Eva discovers that Isabel’s brother still lives in town and stands to inherit the house. She hatches a plan to date and eventually marry Louis in order to regain her family home, but will first stay with Isabel while Louis is away so that, should her plan fail, she can at least have a few family heirlooms Isabel would never miss. But it is revealed in later diary entries that Eva’s attraction and feelings toward Isabel are true, unexpected, and not a part of her plan.
Eva’s diary makes it clear that her attraction to Isabel is genuine and emotionally intense, rather than simply part of an attempt to manipulate her. She writes about being unable to stop thinking about their physical intimacy, feeling overwhelmed by guilt and confusion, and even praying for Isabel to lose interest in her. At the same time, she admits that she is deeply drawn to Isabel and affected by the way Isabel looks at and desires her.
This is also not Eva’s sole experience with women. In Part 2, around Chapter 10, she briefly describes to Isabel another woman she dated as a teenager.
The Safekeep is also unusual in that it gives the queer main characters an unexpected happy ending in more than one way. Isabel apologizes to Eva for how she treated her and for kicking her out, and arranges things so that Eva will inherit the house when Louis dies. The two also decide to make amends and resume their relationship, after much heated discussion about ownership, displacement, and a clear understanding that Eva will inherit the house from Isabel no matter what happens between them. This is an extremely unusual, yet surprisingly deeply satisfying ending for a historical fiction novel focusing on bi characters — there are no #KillYourGays tropes in sight.
The Safekeep was majorly successful upon its release. It was a bestseller and earned rave reviews from The New York Times, The Guardian, and Kirkus Reviews among many others. It also racked up a lot of literary recognition, amongst its prized wins: shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Walter Scott Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Aspen Literary Prize. It also won the 2025 Jewish Book Award for Debut Novel, LAMBDA Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the 2025 Women’s Prize.
Van der Wouden, who is queer, has no qualms with discussing her sapphic characters and their queerness blooming in a surprising time and place in postwar Europe.
The Safekeep is a surprising novel in more ways than one — its plot will throw readers for a loop and help them view situations in new ways. It also brings a complex bi character right into the center of the frame, with her queerness playing an important part in the course of the narrative while also not being the entire point of her character. Because of these strengths, The Safekeep is an important novel in terms of bi representation in historical fiction and modern literature.