The Hiding Place: The Watch Shop Summary & Analysis

One morning, Corrie is washing the windows while Mama peels potatoes. Suddenly, she notices that the water has run over the edge of the sink, and sees that Mama seems paralyzed. She keeps repeating Corrie’s name over and over again; Corrie puts her to bed and fetches Father and Betsie, but Mama is suffering an unstoppable cerebral hemorrhage.

Fro two months Mama lays in a coma on the bed. One morning, she wakes up unexpectedly. Eventually she regains the use of her arms and legs, but she can’t knit or write letters. The only words she can say are “yes,” “no,” and “Corrie.” Whenever she wants to say something, Corrie has to guess what it is by asking Mama yes-or-no questions.

However, Mama continues to interact with the world and help people. She often sees people she knows from the window and, remembering a birthday or other special event, instructs Corrie to write a note. Even though she can’t express love as she’s done before—with food baskets and knitted presents—her love is still “as whole as before.”

While attending teaching school, Nollie meets and becomes engaged to a fellow student, Flip van Woerden. On the day of the wedding, Corrie is struck by how young and healthy Mama looks, despite all her ailments. As Nollie walks down the aisle, Corrie recalls her old dreams of marriage to Karel. She knows that by now she’s too old to get married; like Betsie, who has pernicious anemia and has vowed to remain single, she will remain at the Beje her entire life.

Rather than feeling sad, Corrie is cheered up by this thought. At this moment, she knows that God has “accepted the faltering gift of my emotions,” because she’s able to think of Karel with sincere love and no anger. She prays for him and his wife, knowing that she could never have accessed these feelings alone.

As the congregation sings the final hymn, Mama suddenly starts singing perfectly, even though she hasn’t spoken for months. Corrie is deeply moved and hopes this is the beginning of Mama’s recovery, but she never speaks again. Four weeks later, Mama dies.

A month later, Betsie gets a nasty cold. While she’s in bed, Corrie takes over her duties in the watch shop. Frustrated by the lack of tidy records and Father’s indifference to business matters, Corrie takes it upon herself to devise a system, and realizes she loves the work. Meanwhile, Betsie starts to do small household tasks as she recovers. Eventually, the sisters realize that while Corrie is an indifferent housekeeper, Betsie truly loves household tasks. Switching roles, they realize that Betsie can stretch a food budget, improve the house, and make meals for the poor just as Mama did.

On the other hand, Corrie finds a new sense of purpose in the shop. She enrolls in a watchmaking program and eventually becomes the first certified female watchmaker in Holland. For the next twenty years Father, Corrie, and Betsie live in this comfortable pattern.

The shop is busy not just with customers but visitors who come to chat or seek advice from Father, who prays for guidance from God. Corrie tries to emulate Betsie’s habit of learning details about every visitor, and she’s happy when people say that she’s like her sister.

In the 1920s, the ten Booms take in a series of foster children. Meanwhile, Nollie and Willem are having their own children, so the Beje is full of young people. Nollie’s son Peter especially spends a lot of time there, playing on their piano. One day, the family is listening to a concert on the radio that Father’s friends have bought him when Peter notices that the radio piano is slightly out of tune. Testing him, Father realizes that Peter has perfect pitch. The gift of the radio also means that Father no longer has to travel to Amsterdam to get the precise time—they can hear it from Big Ben on the BBC.

Every day Father and Corrie take a walk at the same time, during the shop’s midday break. They always see the same people, and their favorite is a man they nickname the Bulldog, for the two pets whose facial features are similar to his own. They’re touched by his tender affection for the dogs, and always wave to him as they pass.

However, throughout these years Germany is preparing for war. The family hears about it on the radio, but it’s hard to take the threat seriously. Only Willem, with his connections to the Jewish community, is steadily preoccupied.

During this time, a young German watchmaker named Otto travels to be Father’s apprentice. He brags about being part of the Hitler Youth, constantly talks about how much better Germany is than Holland, and calls Father’s Old Testament “the Jews’ Book of Lies.” One morning his landlady comes to the shop and tells them that Otto has been keeping a huge knife under his pillow. Father tries to interpret these events in the most charitable way, saying that Otto is alone in a strange country and must be frightened and lonely.

In particular, Corrie is struck by Otto’s “brusqueness” towards their employee Christoffels. She feels that he deserves respect on account of his age and seniority, but Otto never lets him go by first or helps him with his tools. Willem explains that Nazi Germany encourages people to disrespect the old, who “have no value to the State.” According to him, Otto only respects Father because he owns a business and has authority.

One morning, Christoffels stumbles into the house with a bleeding cheek. Otto has shoved the older man in the street and pushed his face against a brick wall. As it turns out, the apprentice has been kicking and tormenting the older man for months, but he’s been too proud to complain. Father attempts to plead with Otto, but as the apprentice shows no remorse, he’s forced to fire him.