This history of the Dutch enclave of Vaals during the eighteenth century explores a remarkable tale of religious loyalties, legal disputes, state borders, popular violence and family life. In 1762 a local couple made rather muddled plans to have their child baptised. The Catholic father initially wanted his boy baptised in his faith, but backed down in the face of a determined Calvinist mother who insisted that a Reformed minister should baptise their child. The baby's Catholic aunt (Cunegonde) crossed the border from the territory of imperial Aachen and entered the Reformed church in Dutch Vaals while the baptism ceremony was underway. She tried and failed to snatch the baby from the arms of its Calvinist godmother. In the weeks and months that followed many people paid the price for Cunegonde's rash attempt to prevent the child's baptism. There was violence in the village as a group of Catholics stormed across the border to liberate Cunegonde and return her safely to Catholic land. There was violence on subsequent Sundays as Calvinists who lived in Aachen tried to exercise their legal right to travel to Vaals to worship in its Reformed church. The Dutch authorities were convinced that the local priest must have been behind Cunegonde's plan. He was imprisoned for five years as the matter dragged its way through the courts. The only people to profit were the lawyers and even they ended up reducing their fees. In this wonderful micro-history, Kaplan draws deeply from the archives, and unpacks a complex story with reassuring clarity. There need be no other reason to read this book than to gain valuable glimpses into the lives of a rich range of early modern characters. However, the author gently encourages readers to think about what his story might reveal of a wider history of tolerance. Pious modern secularists might shake their heads sadly at the primitive instincts of eighteenth-century Catholics and Calvinists squabbling over where to baptise a child, but this would be precisely to miss the point. Cunegonde's actions challenged the complex, nuanced, and often unspoken rules of living in a religious borderland. The Catholic midwife who brought the child to be baptised knew how things normally worked: ‘Baptism is baptism, it can be administered by you or by us’ (p. 57). When clergy, lawyers and magistrates got involved and argued over the limits of territorial jurisdiction and extent of legal rights, things became a little more complicated. Kaplan does not offer us a straightforward Enlightenment where cruel religious zealots were challenged by heroic advocates of tolerance (we might think of Voltaire's use of the 1762 wrongful execution of Jean Calas in his Treatise on tolerance). Rather, Kaplan's depiction of religious life in eighteenth-century Vaals presents a society little changed from earlier centuries with ambiguous and competing instincts on how to respond to the challenge of living with neighbours of different faiths.