An emotional story about the vulnerability and persistence of a child

A flamboyant parade. A big hospital bed, pushed by two serious looking nurses. One of them is also carrying an IV pole. In the bed an observant viewer can just spot a young boy, sleeping rolled up on his side with the blanket pulled up to his forehead.

On a Thursday Jonas Zomer is carried into the children’s hospital by his parents Daan and Sandra. Troubled weeks follow in which the child balances between life and death.

Sandra stays by Jonas’ side day and night and starts to view the hospital more and more like a living creature, a monster that has swallowed her son and her whole. The puzzling attacks that Jonas has to deal with and its consequences, doctors and nurses with their well intended cliché language, strange patients, rude visitors, the labyrinth-like structure of the hospital, everything alienates Sandra from the outside world en inevitably also from Daan.

Fate Always Falls on Jonah tells us how a good relationship can be put under pressure by major events and how vulnerable and persistent a seemingly defenseless child can be. Mark Boog based a major part of this novel on the detailed hospital reports he received after the hospitalization of his youngest son. For this subject he found a precision in tone and language that enthralls both readers and reviewers. Like he did in I Understand the Murderer and his award winning poetry.

‘A touching autobiographical novel. How time and space are altered when your child is hospitalized.’ – Abdelkader Benali

‘Mark Boog wrote an extremely oppressive, and at times bone chilling novel. He writes masterfully in beautiful sentences.’ – Noordhollands Dagblad *****

‘It is for certain that Mark Boog’s fifth novel captures the anguish of their emotions razor sharp. It literally grabs you by the throat’ – BOEK Magazine

‘A very vividly written report.’ – Recensieweb.nl ****