The stories in Allegiance and Betrayal are set in cars, on top of a water tower, in a bar, on a fishing boat, at a family farm, and at a swimming pool. Each story carries an aura of the mystery surrounding family relations, the enigma of love, the gaping rift between generations, the give-and-take between husbands and wives, and the inevitability of loss. The book begins with a suite of three stories about Tim Budney. In the first, he reluctantly leaves home and his beloved hot rod Ford to attend a small Catholic college; in the second, he experiences a conflict of allegiances―loyalty to a friend versus lying to his teacher and priest; in the third, he imagines that his uncle, a pool hustler, is in danger and returns to the uncle’s tavern where he witnesses something unforgettable. In other stories, a Yankee house painter trying to sell his car encounters a tricky, Bible-quoting southerner; a married couple hurtfully moves away from their friends of twenty years without saying goodbye or leaving an address; a near fatal scuba dive revives a friendship of many years; a family reunion turns ugly on the subject of religion; and a high school French teacher arranges an offshore fishing trip to settle a score with the football coach. With deft prose and a generous spirit, Makuck explores the deep but subtle range of human emotion. Humorous and tender, these stories offer rich portraits of individuals struggling to overcome failed dreams and searching for an answer to the question of what truly matters.

Allegiance and Betrayal: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Makuck, Peter

United States

Syracuse University Press

A father on vacation nearly loses his eye on an ocean fishing pier while trying to escape the demands of his family. A systems analyst, embittered by the loss of his job and resentful of a seemingly carefree neighbor whom his estranged wife admires, becomes obsessed with catching squirrels in a box trap. A woman married to a former police detective festers with anger and plots revenge after a confrontation with a restaurant owner. A recent widower tries scuba diving with his difficult teenage children as a way to galvanize the family and regain control of his life. These are some of the people who inhabit the richly textured worlds of Peter Makuck’s Costly Habits. In many of his stories, individuals find themselves in situations where moments of clarity arrive, moments that disclose perspectives of possible change or ways to accept things as they are.Makuck skillfully portrays characters who experience various kinds of loss: loss of work, illusion, and self-respect; loss as a result of death, separation, or divorce. The relationships of siblings, husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and lovers provide the give-and-take that drives his narratives, many of which evoke images of coastal Carolina with eelgrass islands, jade waters, and sandy channels.Peter Makuck’s stories are often humorous, but caring and wise, and deal with the costly habits of being materialistic, envious, narcissistic, fearful, judgmental, vengeful, obsessive, and altogether human. Depth of characterization and vivid detail make Costly Habits a compelling collection of short fiction.

Costly Habits: Stories (Volume 1)

University of Missouri

Sound Buoy It presidesOver our passing In and outOf the Bogue Narrows. We riseFrom sea gulliesAnd watch it swayTo a mindlessHumping of waves.In soft seas Its moansAre more our own.If I name itRed Nun of the Narrows,The pleasure won't last,For it turns unruly at a whimAnd will outlast our coming And going.Once, alone,In wild weather, I feltThe wallow and topple,The fit of its colorIn close thrashes, My tongueSalted and stunnedInto a silenceThat burned.© BOA Editions, Ltd 1990

The Sunken Lightship (American Poets Continuum)

Poetry

BOA Editions, Ltd.

"He knows what things look like and how they act, and he understands that the motion of the language is the point, not merely the way to the point."--The Sewanee Review

The Sunken Lightship: American Poets Continuum Series No. 19

Pilgrims

Ampersand Pr

Poetry that illuminates nature's weather and the weather of the human spirit.

Against Distance (American Poets Continuum)

Poetry that illuminates nature's weather and the weather of the human spirit.

These poems speak to the various ways we exile ourselves from a paradise that is available at any given moment. A young girl practicing flute on the end of a pier, furniture repair, an ancient shark tooth, the deaths of friends—these are some of Makuck’s subjects. His short lyrics and long narratives vary from comic to elegiac, often finding their locus in the landscapes of coastal North Carolina.
Peter Makuck is a distinguished professor of arts and sciences at East Carolina University and edits Tar River Poetry. He has published six previous collections of poetry and received the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Award for the best collection of poetry by a North Carolinian. He lives on Bogue Banks in North Carolina’s barrier islands.

Off-Season in the Promised Land (American Poets Continuum)

Peter Makuck sees through the detritus of daily life to what matters. . . . It’s that essence that lives deep in things, looked for in people, sea- and landscapes, and creatures, that lifts the quotidian toward the marvelous, and animates this selection of poems from four decades.”Brendan GalvinFrom "Long Lens":Folding laundry, I can see our clotheslinewaving its patches of color like the flagof a foreign country where I had happily livedin a small clapboard house surrounded by pines.I can hear my mother in her strong accentsaying she didn’t want a dryereven when we could finally afford oneOur sheets won’t smell of trees and sunlight anymore.Long Lens represents forty years of Peter Makuck’s work, including twenty-five new poems. With precise language, Makuck’s imagery evokes spiritual longing, love, loss, violence, and transcendence. His subjects include the aftermath of the 1970 killings at Kent State University; scuba diving on an offshore shipwreck; flying through a storm in a small plane; rescuing a boy caught in a riptide; and lucid observations of spinner sharks, a gray fox, a spider, and a pelican tangled in a fishing line.Peter Makuck taught at East Carolina University from 1976 to 2006, and founded Tar River Poetry. He was 2008 Lee Smith Chair in Creative Writing at NC State University. Winner of the Brockman Award and the Charity Randall Citation, he lives on Bogue Banks, one of North Carolina’s barrier islands.The Cortland Review:The easy-going manner...of these poems should not blinker us to the fact that they are also polished and load-bearing when they seem least to be. In fact, it is as accomplished for what it doesn’t do, as for what it does... it’s formally adroit without being arty, and its manner invites the reader without manipulation.

Long Lens: New and Selected Poems (American Poets Continuum)

Through lyrical narrative, the poems in Mandatory Evacuation find radiance in everyday people and subjects by the simple act of noticing—of seeking that which matters most. Like returning home with new eyes after a devastating storm, these poems startle us to awareness, focusing on the passage of time, the beauty of small, fleeting moments, and the importance of paying attention.
Peter Makuck is the author of numerous BOA collections, most recently Long Lens: New and Selected Poems (2010). He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University, where he founded and edited Tar River Poetry for thirty years.

Mandatory Evacuation (American Poets Continuum, 158)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Makuck, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Makuck, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Makuck, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Allegiance and Betrayal: Stories

Costly Habits: Stories (Volume 1)

The Sunken Lightship (American Poets Continuum)

The Sunken Lightship: American Poets Continuum Series No. 19

Pilgrims

Against Distance (American Poets Continuum)

Against Distance (American Poets Continuum)

Off-Season in the Promised Land (American Poets Continuum)

Long Lens: New and Selected Poems (American Poets Continuum)

Mandatory Evacuation (American Poets Continuum, 158)