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In
this suspense-charged, touching novel, Counting on Trust, information is stolen
from a U.S. genetic engineering company (Omniprotein) by an employee promised
payment by a Chinese general who wants to profit from selling the company’s
technologies in the military region of China he commands.
• To
force quick payment the thief attacks fellow employees and threatens to
continue until his money arrives. Will his next targets be: young lovers,
computer geek Gabriel and gorgeous biologist Selena, who are discovering loving
sex while trying to overcome post-traumatic effects of Selena’s girlhood rape.
•
Company president, Eleanor, who’s determined to keep some privacy and intimacy
although her job’s high profile and her husband, Charley, has just had prostate
cancer surgery.
•
Venture capitalist, John, who plans to duplicate Omniprotein’s facility in
China and reunite with his ex-wife, fashion designer Ziyi, who returned to
Shanghai after their only child died.
The
personal stories of these couples explore how privacy, intimacy and trust are
changing in our social-media age. They paint a compelling portrait of our time.
Excerpt
Excerpt – Bad Day - https://www.facebook.com/countingontrust/videos/2207571426229974/
I asked Mary how she got interested in fiction writing. This is her answer:
My
biggest inspiration for writing was Jane Austen. I appreciated the way she
deconstructed relationships and the social norms around romance and marriage in
her day. She had the courage to interpret, critique and comment upon the
British landed gentry in her time, especially as regards things such as the
dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and
economic security.
I
became interested in writing during my academic career and saw it as a way to
highlight important issues of our time in a fictional story format. I have been
writing for over 15 years, since before my retirement from faculty life. I
published my first novel Each Unique and
Fascinating in 2012. My second work was OrcaSpeak
which is actually the sequel to my latest novel Counting on Trust. Both of the
earlier stories take place in the Pacific Northwest and involve themes of love
intermixed with eco-activism.
My
latest novel, Counting on Trust
evolved out of my interest in globalization and its impacts, especially with
regard to China and its relations with the U.S. This started when I accompanied
my husband on a trip to China in 1978 with a delegation of faculty members from
the University of Pittsburgh. At that time, China was just opening up to the
West.
The
idea for making it a story about corporate intrigue came while my husband and I
were living in Nebraska. There was a lot of research on GMO foods being done at
some of the universities there. We lived on a small lake, and I decided to
invent a company, Omniprotein, that was doing research on GMO fish. The theft
of this company’s intellectual property by a Chinese general kicks off all the
subsequent action.
As
its title implies, the book is all about trust. A major intention in writing
Counting on Trust was to use the personal stories of the characters to explore
how privacy, intimacy and trust are changing in our technology driven society. The book follows three couples of different
ages and backgrounds, each struggling with issues of trust. I wanted to draw a
good picture of how easily trust can be broken and how difficult it can be to
restore that trust.
Author bio and links
Themes
of novels by M. Ferguson Powers reflect the author’s varied interests,
including preservation of the natural world and its creatures;
Challenges
of building and maintaining loving relationships in a culture with decreasing
respect for personal boundaries and privacy
Influences
of globalization on world events and how the U. S. and other nations relate to
one another
Public
policy issues such as controlling the military-industrial-political complex and
requiring the health care industry to be more respectful of its clients
The
need for cooperation across governments, cultures, and societies to address
global challenges such as climate change
Developments
in business and university administration and management
Powers
has taught microbiology, headed a university office of research, served as executive
director of two university-business partnership programs, and co-authored two
books on university administration. She has a bachelor of science degree in
bacteriology from The Pennsylvania State University, a master’s in experimental
psychology from George Mason University, and a doctorate in educational
leadership from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
She
lives on an island near Seattle with husband David R. Powers and their two
shelties. Her first novel, Each Unique and Fascinating, about a bullied young
girl whose father has gone to war, was published in 2012. OrcaSpeak, a novel of relationships and
suspense, was published in 2013, and its prequel, Counting on Trust, was
published in 2017.
Website: http://www.mfergusonpowers.com
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