• Donald F. Megnin
  Contact: Email | 322 Gleneagles Drive, New Smyrna Beach, Florida 32168
• 
  

• About the Author
  Donald F. Megnin, son of German immigrants, grew up on a farm near Chittenango, New York. He graduated from Fayetteville High School and worked on the family farm for several years. A Syracuse industrialist provided him with a scholarship to attend Syracuse University where he received his A. B. degree. Upon graduation from Syracuse, he was appointed as the Syracuse University Lecturer of English to Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand for two years
  under the auspices of the Syracuse-in-Asia Association. Upon his return, he enrolled in the School of Theology at Boston University and received his S.T.B. degree. While serving as a United Methodist Minister in Syracuse, New york, he began his graduate studies in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs part time. After completing his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science, he taught at Slippery Rock University (one of fourteen state-owned universities of Pennsylvania). He is currently a professor emeritus of international relations from Slippery Rock University and divides his time between New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where he and and his wife reside, and Syracuse, New York where they spend their summers.
  

• Books
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• The Security of Silence
  FICTION | FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
  

  The first novel of the trilogy portrays the lives of Emilie and Friederich Malin originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in southwestern Germany. Emilie came from an upper middle Class family whose father was a newspaper owner/publisher. Tragically, she lost her father when she was 13 years of age and never quite got over the loss. She met an older man who was not only a prosperous businessman, but one whose family, her mother said, was from the lowest class in town. She ignored her mother's advice and married him. He became a father surrogate for her. She had everything she wanted. Her comfortable life style continued even though she discovered her husband had an unsavory appetite for women. She attributed his difficulty in relating to other persons because of a war wound as a soldier in the German army in World War I. He had lost his ability to speak in a normal tone of voice due to the incompetence of the field surgeon who cut the nerves to his vocal cords. He could only whisper and subsequently, Emilie became his interpreter with the customers for his business. He resented this dependence upon her and decided it would be best to emigrate to America as the rest of his family had done. Emilie did not want to leave Germany, but she felt herself trapped in a marriage from which she believed she could not escape. She was afraid of her husband's anger and felt, for the sake of their children, she would have to remain silent.

• $21.99 | ISBN-13: 978-1413474602
  
  EXCERPT | PURCHASE: AMAZON | XLIBRIS
• 
• A Conspiracy of Silence
  FICTION | FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
  A Conspiracy of Silence is the second novel of the trilogy and takes place initially in Germany as the family gets ready to leave for America. Emilie learns more about her husband's infidelities than she really wanted to know but felt there was nothing she could do about them. She believed them to be part of the past and her orientation was always to look towards the future. Upon arriving in the United States, Friederich buys two different businesses before deciding to buy a farm. He knew nothing about farming but thought he would have fewer encounters with other people on a farm. His handicap would not be such an overwhelming problem for him. His sisters and one brother-in-law go into farming with him from April to September only to find that the combined income from tourism, operating a gas station, dairying, and raising crops were insufficient to maintain three families. They leave him and his wife to return to the city. Friederich and Emilie have to do the work once carried on by four additional persons. Emilie doesn't see how they can do all of the farm work plus take care of the gas station and care for her family with a third newborn. But learning to milk, in addition to caring for their three children, cooking, planting crops and harvesting them, leaves her no choice but to work as she had never envisioned. In Germany she had been a Kindergarten and Elementary school teacher. Her husband tells her she has no alternative other than to continue to work the farm with him. The depression deprives them of any surplus savings and the devastating barn fires end their dairy operation. The work of last resort is to turn to the woods which Friederich does to cut firewood for income and logs with which to saw lumber and rebuild his barns. His proclivity for sex, however, continues to know no bounds.
• $19.99 | ISBN-13: 978-1425728120
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• The Struggle To Survive
  FICTION | FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
  The Struggle to Survive is the final novel of the trilogy of this immigrant family. Emilie and Friederich  have survived the transition from Germany to the United States. They have moved from an urban environment to a rural one. They have fallen to the lowest level of income. In spite of all of  these difficulties, they survived to rebuild their barns, resurrect their dairy, expand their animal husbandry operation to include goats and pigs as well as cows. They also watch their children grow into adolescence and adulthood. The older son has a distinguished record in scouting, high school and college. Participating in the R.O.T.C. program in college, he has a Second Lieutenant's commission waiting for him when he reaches age twenty-one. Because he must wait almost another year, he worked on his parents' farm. He becomes enamored with farming so that he wishes to pursue it as a career. After entering the army in the late summer of 1942, however, he meets a First Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corp and marries her before being sent overseas. As the war ends in Europe, he returns to the village of his birth and visits his relatives in Germany. He saves his grandmother's house from confiscation by an American officer who has come to claim it as an officers' residence.
  
• Meanwhile, his wife visits his parents with their newborn son for the first visit since their marriage. She is asked by her husband to visit a neighboring farm which is far sale adjoining the family's farm. He wishes to purchase it in order to expand the farming operation and provide them with a place to live. His wife finds the house totally unacceptable to the dismay of Friederich. Upon the son's return after the war to work on the farm (the two families live together in the same huge house), there is continuous conflict between Friederich and his daughter-in-law over the primitive conditions in the house, the inadequacies of the bathing facilities, and the grandson getting into his grandfather's workshop. As a consequence of the hard physical work, the son is laid up to recuperate for a few weeks. Friederich offers sex to his daughter-in-law whenever she would prefer since her husband is unable to perform with a "bad back". She is indignant and refuses the sexual offers of her father-in-law. As the summer wains and the prospect of living in the unheated upstairs rooms for the winter, the daughter-in-law finally gives her husband an ultimatum. She is leaving to return with their two sons to her parents in Minnesota. She tells him, he can either stay on the farm, or go with them. She has had it! She will not continue to live in such a primitive environment any longer! Her husband reluctantly leaves the farm after telling Friederich and Emilie how sorry he is to quit farming. He has no other alternative. He wants to keep his family together.
• $19.99 | ISBN-13: 978-1425796716
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• 
• A Farm Boy Sees The World - Volume IV
  NON-FICTION | AUTOBIOGRAPHY
  Donald Megnin began his life growing up on a farm at R. D #1, Chittenango, New York. The story begins after he completes high school and accepts his parents' offer to become a junior partner on their Guernsey dairy farm. He replaces his brother who returns with his wife and two sons to St. Paul, Minnesota. It is hard, grueling work for which he earns seventy dollars a month. While he desires to go to college, he was not accepted as a student at Syracuse University because of low grades in high school. He had had to drop out of high school each spring to do the farm work and if he could pass the finals each year, the principal allowed him to continue with his class.

  He and his father cut trees, set up a sawmill, and sawed the necessary lumber to construct a large new cow barn and expand the size of the dairy. The farm work was going well but Donald always thought he'd like to go to college. Due to his association with Alex Carmichel, minister of the DeWitt Community Church and Bob Bolton, a high school classmate, Donald's view of a fulfilling life was expanded. As a consequence of his friendship with the Bolton family, after the death of Mr. Bolton, Bob's mother tells Donald that her husband had left money for him to attend college.

  She suggested he should talk it over with his parents and let her know what he had decided to do.

  Donald's parents were shocked and moved by this offer for his education. They both felt it was an opportunity he should not turn down. He accepted this opportunity of a lifetime and enrolled at Syracuse University. He sold his cows and machinery to his father and became a full time student while still helping on the farm part-time. 

  He gradually separates himself from farm work and undertakes other jobs over the summers and even during the semesters. Upon graduation, he is asked if he would represent Syracuse University at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand for two years as a Lecturer of English in behalf of the Syracuse-in-Asia Association. It is during this two year period that he travels around the world and visits more than seventy countries. His experiences are once in a lifetime ventures and he presents a fascinating picture of life in countries around the world.

  ISBN: 978-1-4363-4566-8 Hardcover | ISBN: 978-1-4363-4565-1 Softcover 

  PURCHASE: Xlibris.com | Amazon.com | BarnesAndNoble.com | Borders.com

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