Excerpt from I Am You by Victoria Redel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1

1653, Voorburg

I was shy of eight when I was put out to work. The family that took me in was in need of a boy and so it was a boy I became. Hair sheared, last name twisted to my first, I was known as Pieter. Pieter Wyntges. My two family names stacked as one.

It was a long time before I was once again Gerta.

I was happy to be Pieter. I fetched and carried, split wood, and rubbed dirty, splintered hands along my woolen pants. I scurried up to the roof to repair tiles. I did my share of slaughter. From the other workers, I learned a fast mouth and was unafraid to use a boy's bristled tongue.

Given a bed I didn't have to share with two sisters, my own yellow coverlet embroidered with lilies, sweet and savory cakes, bowls of stewed meat—second helpings without even asking—already my life was much better. Hunger makes a selfish grabber of the sweetest child. And the promise of a child's belly full will make it easy to turn a daughter to a boy and a rampant liar of even the kindest parent.

A full belly is no small thing. I didn't for a moment miss the girl I'd been or imagine the woman I might become.

I didn't cry once for my mother.



No doubt you've heard about the glorious time we lived in, where every day some porcine gentleman trumpeted great new wealth. But it's not only the men of wealth. The fishmonger, the boatman, the tile maker, even a family servant like myself, we may not have been the owners of the East India Company, still we laced our wine with cinnamon and nutmeg. We learned to talk with a slick merchant's tongue and a philosopher's loft. We were all bestowed with the blessing of those fat years. No doubt the pigs and cattle that roamed the fetid canal streets also heard that they were fatter and luckier pigs and cattle than any before.

Everything wonderful came through our Dutch ports. A crowded harbor of ships arrived with new goods every day. Silk and lace finer than any slipped through our fingers. We'd not known what we'd lacked till we touched gold and purple threads or wiped the sticky juice of a pineapple from our lips. Then it became our standard. Of course, we've all of us seen the rare tulips. Even the butcher, the street sweeper felt feverish watching the auctions. A golden age, we were. We, in this rare moment of peace and health, didn't feel shame to be announced lucky. We remembered war. We remembered plague marks on our doors. And knew they would return.


At fourteen Maria hardly noticed me. Why would she? I was seven, half her years. My days were outside, my nights bunked in a side shed close to the animals, though like the other servant, Anke, I ate meals at the family table. Unlike bossy Anke, who, slowed by a lame hip, busied through the day with more opinion than work, I kept to tasks and had little to say. I mostly spoke with the chickens and the rabbits. I knew to coo and talk a rabbit quiet in my hands. Or, hearing a hen's roost cackle, knew where to find a warm egg and, before she pecked my fingers away, knew to give her my own broody growl. People were the mystery, so it was the people I watched.

Maria was the one to notice. Her particular words. The varieties of her laughter. The concentration of her fingers as she skimmed or flicked the board with a paintbrush. The slight purse of her lips while she painted. The hairs that laced her forehead. The determined swiff of her dress as she entered a room. Her fingers lifting a pale green egg—one I had collected!—from the bowl, turning it slowly, and with precision then letting it roll on the wood table until it balanced half in, half out of a slice of sunlight. More than once, when she believed herself alone, I watched her waste a fresh egg, cracking it in her hands, pulling the runny yolk like taffy.

"Beautiful," she said to no one, as it seeped through her fingers and glazed her narrow wrist.

Excerpted from I Am You by Victoria Redel. Copyright © 2025 by Victoria Redel. Excerpted by permission of SJP Lit, and imprint of Zando, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpted from I Am You: A Novel by Victoria Redel. © 2025 by Victoria Redel. Used with permission of the publisher, SJP Lit, an imprint of Zando, LLC.