Second Thought Book

Melinda and Brenda Crask, twin sisters raised as one unit with Melinda being aggressive and Brenda needing her twin's total dependency, were raised "to travel in tandem" by their parents from the very start. This became so complex with parallels that later on the invisible web woven by the dependent twin to her aggressive sister becomes venomous and so evil that it goes beyond the depths of any black hole imaginable.

One feels pulled into the bowels of the earth in reliving the tragic and abusive life of the aggressive twin, Melinda. This twofold story moves back and forth between the tie that binds and the hardships of Melinda Crask's life. This is an attempt to show forces so strong that they kept this twin in her relationships even through abuse, then her escape of strangling control of her twin sister during and after her trials.

Second Thought may seem redundant, but it is done so on purpose to "keep on track" the continuity of the twin ties that binds and its complex entanglement with Melinda's life.

The parents of these twins travel from the west coast and Pioneer to rural farm country in the late 1920's, depicting how they lived and what they lived with, including all of the not-so-modernized conveniences. This is done to start at the roots of the parents of these twins to purposely show the molding of the twins' character.

It all starts in a homey, quiet, laid back manner and atmosphere, materialistic, but necessary and nostalgic.

Brenda had to be pulled, pushed, and shoved all through her growing up years by Melinda so that she could keep up and be equal. Not that she couldn't be, but because she wouldn't; for this "gave her all hands on attention!"

"The vapors of strength" she thought she needed from her twin made a complete one hundred eighty degree turn around when Melinda, having no other choice for salvation, "gave up her life of hell" and ended her marriage that had more peaks and valleys than a Richter's scale.

The timid twin, "knowing she could still get attention," felt that she had to give strength back, not as moral support but control! This control as in "one thought for both," she forgets that there is her twin's Second Thought. It sadly suffocates and becomes an evil spirit throughout.

Melinda "survives a double life" with delays, detours, and blockages in dealing with her own life and her twin sister Brenda. Courage and strength were required of her, made possible with Melinda's never ending faith and her strong heritage.

She "rides through her ocean wave life" with steel reinforcement and weathers tragic years, but making a very successful turn around. For better conditions to prevail old patterns had to give way to new ones but it took time and endurance.

Living with an alcoholic husband, spousal rape, and every abuse possible, pride, pity, and fear open up this strong twin's person and removes it.

Surviving, Melinda not only undresses her twin sister Brenda, she undresses herself. It leaves an intense past and brings it up to a far better present. I saw it and I lived it, for I am Melinda Crask...