Empire’s Cost – Forged in Paper
William H. Brothers
Type: ARC
Genre: Historical fiction
Word count: 104,500
In Amsterdam’s Golden Age, one family discovers that empires are built as much by ink as by blood. Drawn into the birth of the VOC, treacherous seas, hidden debts, and forbidden ambitions, the Schutts must choose what to risk, what to preserve, and whether the promise of a new world is worth the cost of leaving the old behind.
What's this?
Amsterdam, 1595. The Dutch Republic is rising, but prosperity comes with a price. As merchants, shipowners, and investors build a trading empire, the Schutt family is drawn into a world ruled by contracts, credit, and perilous seas.
The creation of the Dutch East India Company promises security and wealth, yet every voyage exposes the family to storms, privateers, political upheaval, and ruin. While some risk their lives aboard crowded ships, others discover that a signature, a debt, or a hidden ledger can wound as deeply as steel. Marriages strain, loyalties divide, and long-held beliefs are tested as ambition reaches beyond Amsterdam toward a new world.
Spanning four turbulent decades, from the dawn of the seventeenth century to the family’s departure for New Amsterdam, this sweeping historical saga explores faith, inheritance, survival, and the choices that shape generations. For the Schutts, empire offers opportunity—but demands a cost no ledger can measure.
William H. Brothers is the author of The 500-Year Journey, an eight-book historical family saga inspired by decades of genealogical research into his ancestral line. A former entrepreneur and television and radio owner, he now devotes his time to writing, archival research, and exploring the places where his family’s history unfolded. His work blends documented history with immersive storytelling, tracing generations through war, faith, migration, ambition, and survival. He has conducted research in libraries, archives, historic churches, cemeteries, and battlefields from the Netherlands to New York and Gettysburg.
Please log in first.
Only ARC team members can mark as completed.
Only ARC team members can log a review.