Allegiance & Betrayal

In this engaging collection of stories, Peter Makuck returns to one of the most fertile wellsprings of literature-the family. With grace and wit, he dramatizes family matters in post-World War II America, drawing attention to why families matter and what’s the matter with so many of them. His stories document tensions between Northerners and Southerners, conservatives and liberals, church proponents and church opponents. As he points to the tragic and comic ways family members exacerbate and resolve their differences, he repeatedly surprises us with the mysterious ways people act. These stories are destined to beguile

Allegiance and Betrayal begins with the innocence of young adulthood in times that seem simpler than this 21st century until Peter Makuck reminds us of the unchanging conflicts of human nature—of the family universal—and the book ends in times full of technological wonders that shrink geography but don’t do much about cultural and psychological distance. Makuck writes with savvy and control about family immediate and family international. These stories dramatize the paradoxes of felt or forced connections as in a first kiss from a troublesome married cousin that burns the narrator’s cheek like a brand. Allegiance and Betrayal sears the reader with recognition