Dola de Jong

Dorothea Rosalie “Dola” de Jong, an award-winning novelist, died on Nov. 19. Cause of death was not released. She was 92.
De Jong moved from the Netherlands to North Africa just before the Nazis invaded during World War II. Her father, stepmother and brother refused to flee; they were all killed. She then immigrated to America, and attained citizenship in 1947.
De Jong became an author and a linguist, fluent in English, French, German, Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans. Her children’s books, “The Level Land” and “Return to the Level Land,” focused on the trials and tribulations of a Dutch family caught up in the Nazi invasion. Her literary novel, “The Tree and the Vine,” also focused on the war, but dealt with the subject from a lesbian couple’s point of view.
Although de Jong won the City of Amsterdam Literature Prize in 1947 for her novel, “And the Field Is the World,” which was republished in 1979 as “The Field,” she was best known for her mysteries. In 1963, she was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for her novel, “The House on Charlton Street.” A year later, she won the prize for “The Whirligig of Time.”
In her 70s, de Jong went back to school, and graduated from Empire State College in New York City. She also taught creative writing there for several years.