The Peculiar Case of Preacher M. Brand, Jr.

About the Book

Marion Brand Jr. was a twenty-year-old preacher who inherited his father’s revival ministry after a horrific childhood that left him psychologically scarred for life. He was an incredibly handsome and charismatic young man who had a great effect on people who surrounded him and who attended his revival sessions, primarily young women and girls. When a young woman, Helen McCarthy, was brought to his luxurious trailer, for the first time in his life Marion fell head over heels in love and would do anything to keep her to himself. After moving to a new location in Oklahoma and setting up his large tent to conduct revival sermons, some of his staff members, who were former convicts, attracted the police’s attention, as on several locations where the revival personnel stayed for a month at a time, young girls began to disappear, never to be seen again. His life was entangled with two family’s own tragedies: his caravan’s cook, once a famous chef, Sara Weinstein, and a former mob hitman, Giovanni Mano Rossa, who was investigating the disappearance of his two youngest daughters. Preacher Brand Jr. soon began to question his own sanity and the loyalty of the people with whom he surrounded himself and who would cover up all his horrific secrets. Just how far would a grieving father go to find out the truth about his daughters? If only Preacher Brand could figure out if his nightmares were real or just bad dreams, he would not have to worry about his future, but things are not as they may have seemed.

About the Author

I came into this troubled world during the early morning hours of June 17, 1950, in the city of Budapest, Hungary. I was the first and last child of my 41-year-old mother and my father who was 45 years old at the time of my birth. As I did not know any better, I could not possibly understand that we were living in poverty, as I was growing up with loving parents and there was always a bite to eat. My childhood was poor and saddened with tragedies. As a six-year-old child I witnessed the bloody 1956 revolution and received the first taste of true prejudice by those of whom I thought liked us, yet turned against my family. That tragedy did not match the untimely death of my beloved father when I was not yet seven years old, on February 14, 1957. My mother remarried in 1959 and our financial situation was upgraded from poverty to poor. After finishing elementary school I made a decision to earn money as soon as possible to ease our financial situation and I enrolled in a two-year business college (high school diploma was not required). I received my Associate Degree in 1966 and I began to work as a 16-year-old certified secretary/bookkeeper. During the same period I began my high-school education, which I completed while working full-time and attending night school. I discovered my love for writing when I was 11 years old after a movie that my childhood friend and I saw in the movie theater. We were not pleased with the ending and Steven suggested that I should write a different ending that we both liked. Voila, a writer was born. With my family’s encouragement, I entered a writing contest given by a youth oriented magazine and to my genuine surprise, I won second price. My desire to live in a free country and to improve my life was so great, that in 1972, leaving everything, including my aging parents behind, I managed to escape from Hungary during a tour to Austria, (then) Yugoslavia and Italy. I spent almost nine long months in a rat infested refugee camp, located Capua, Italy, while I waited for official permission to immigrate to the country of my dreams, to the USA. In 1975 I met and married a wonderful man, my husband Guy. Thanks to his everlasting patience, he assisted me in my task of learning the English language. He is truly my partner for life and I remain forever grateful to him for standing by me in some tough times. It is difficult for me to describe my love for writing. I cannot think of a bigger emotional joy for an author than to see a published novel in somebody’s hand and to see a story come alive on the screen. I yearn to experience that joy.