Love, Obey & Betray by Maggie Petru

Hi Brian,

I’m happy to announce that my book, Love, Obey & Betray, is now available for sale. My publisher, Sun Dragon Press of Guelph, will be selling the book at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival on Sunday, Sept. 16. And it can be ordered through Amazon, here.

It will soon be available in electronic format from Kindle, and negotiations are under way with Kobal et al for users of other devices.

My classmates from your courses may be a bit confused to find the author is now Maggie Petru instead of Maggie Petrushevsky. With a name no one can pronounce, let alone spell, we figured readers were going to need help so we took a hatchet to a grand Ukrainian name. Now our fingers are crossed that I'll remember who I am when someone calls me by my pen name.

For those who are scratching their heads trying to distinguish Love, Obey & Betray from all those other intriguing manuscripts we worked on at your courses, here's the synopsis from the book jacket:

Vladymyr Horbatsky emigrated to Canada at the end of WWII in search of safety and security. Over the ensuing 20 years steady work and a Canadian family create his personal paradise. Then an American Defense Department consultant comes to work for his employer and Vlad discovers that the man was his wife’s boss in her days as an Allied spy. Memories of his childhood escape from Communism and enslavement by the Nazis flood back, alerting his Cossack instincts to the fact that paradise has just developed a huge viper.

The mini version? – Just what is a husband willing to do to protect the integrity of his marriage?

The dark vignettes scattered through Vlad's background are actual events from my late husband's childhood. Two major differences must be noted. Vasyl Petrushevsky had all the confidence Vladymyr Horbatsky lacks and was, therefore, never paranoid nor abusive.

The second is a matter of age. In order to fit later events of this story, Vlad had to be 25ish when he was taken to a slave labour camp. In reality, my husband was only 16 when the SS marched the entire population of Berlin's Russian School into work camps in 1943 because they refused to kiss up as good little Hitler Youths.

Less than a tenth of those kids survived to return home two years later and even so, one of them (a good friend of Vasyl's) was aboard the Jewish refugee ship sunk the following year when the British were attempting to prevent the illegal migration of Jews to Palestine and the resulting creation of Israel.

Many thanks, Brian, for both your support and your guidance.

Maggie Petru(shevsky)

For information about Sun Dragon Press, see here.

See Brian Henry's schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Kingston, Peterborough, Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Georgetown, Milton, Oakville, Burlington, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Dundas, Kitchener, Guelph, London, Woodstock, Orangeville, Newmarket, Barrie, Gravenhurst, Sudbury, Muskoka, Peel, Halton, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.