I’m engaged to a wonderful man, who is kind, giving, and well established in his profession. My problem is his family and if I should tell my parents about them before the wedding day.

His father is serving 10 years for embezzlement, and his mother makes ends meet via having many male friends. They have arrested his sister for horse theft. His younger brother has a master’s degree in engineering. You can see my problem. Do I tell my parents about the engineer?

–Dreading in Tx

I’m that engineer, now retired from over thirty years of working in nuclear power plants, on anti-aircraft missiles, and third, fourth and fifth generation wireless communications systems, and various esoteric sensor networks. Obviously, after all that, one should retire to Texas to farm and ranch. It was the biggest fail of my life. I still have the fifty acres but now I’m a certified Texas Master Naturalist busy restoring the native Tall-Grass prairie.

Before and since my retirement, I’ve helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity, worked directly with veterans at the VA, served as a Big Brother, mentored elementary students, ensuring that every day’s homework was a success, mentored adult literacy/GED students, filled shopping carts for the clients of the local food bank, and ran meals to clients for Meals on Wheels.

The richness of interacting with diverse people, especially the most important diversity, that of thought, lead me to put ideas down on paper and ultimately to my four-novel Matryoschka Heritage novel arc: Matryoschka, Matryoschka’s Daughters, Matryoschka’s Effect, and Matryoschka’s Time. I hope you enjoy Sarah, Alex, Sarah Beth, Katie, and Quentin as much as I have.