Winner of three CIBA 2022 awards: First Place Winner in CIBA 20th Century Wartime Novels, Finalist in CIBA Series, and SERIES CIBA Finalists for Genre Fiction.
Peter Curtis has created an imaginative work based on true events in which the young Kohut family escapes the Nazi occupation of Prague and embarks on an odyssey—a journey that forever changes their lives.
Clever, interesting and eminently readable. Through his characters and descriptions Curtis vividly evokes the atmosphere and stresses of the time, assisted by his firm grasp and weaving of historical facts.—
Jaroslav Bouček. PhDr.CSc, Historian, Prague
THE DRAGONTAIL BUTTONHOLE, Peter Curtis’ excellent debut novel, follows the dramatic journey of the Jewish Kohut family from Nazi-occupied Prague to Paris.
CAFÉ BUDAPEST, is a masterful description of refugee life in Paris under the threat of war, the twists and turns of finding lodging, food and money.
First Place Winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Nancy Pearl Award for 2019.
PAVEL'S WAR, Willy, Sophie and 3 year-old Pavel join Willy’s grandparents in London at the start of the city’s darkest hour—the Blitz. Challenges pile up: their flat is burned out in a raid, Willy transfers into the British army, still thirsting for revenge against the Nazis. Sophie takes a maid’s job in Cambridge but asserts her independence by opening a café. Pavel is sent away from the bombing to live on a farm and learn to become an English boy. Will the Kohut’s marriage hold together? What will happen to Pavel?
I was born in Košice, Slovakia, in 1937, grew up in England and studied medicine in London. Always as interested in people’s lives as in their ailments I wrote and published short stories about my country practice. After I and my family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina where I was a professor of Family Medicine, I began to write the story of what my parents, grandparents and I went through in the great and tragic dislocation of WWll.
EVENTS
November 20.2018 Turning Family Stories into Fiction. Lecture at 11.00 am.SKYLINE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY.725 Ninth Avenue,Seattle, WA 98104
December 3.2018.A WW2 Family Odyssey of Survival and Love. 3pm.
Author Readings from The Dragontail Buttonhole and Cafe Budapest, the first two novels of the Kohut Trilogy
SKYLINE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY. 725 Ninth Avenue. Seattle, WA 98104
JEWISH : PARALLEL LIVES
Article in JEWISH IN SEATTLE MAGAZINE OCT-NOV 2018 describes the amazing coincidence when Author Peter Curtis recently met Robert Stern and discovered that, 78 years ago, they both escaped from France and occupied the same cramped cabin on an overloaded coal steamer.
June 2nd. 2019. Illustrated Talk at Mirabella Retirement Community
To mark 75th Anniversary of D- Day and Holocaust Month
Title: A Family's Dangerous Odyssey across WW2 Europe
Time: 3.00 pm
Location 116 Fairview Avenue N. Seattle WA. 98109
