Two Face: Identity Swap

by Debra L. Dirks

In this, her third novel, the author turns our attention to the life and consequences of the abused, whether by their own hand or someone else’s. Maggie can remember no other home than a room in an extension off the hospital where her mother gets dialysis. At the age of five, Maggie is left parentless, penniless and totally unprepared for the world. Living with a very ill parent, Maggie had no contact with other children, and her only coping skill was that her mother had taught her to read. The very day her mother died she was shipped off to an orphanage. To the other children, she was “different”! They broke and tore her few possessions, they humiliated, bullied, and abused her routinely. Maggie did the only things she knew how to do, hide and read.
She was amazed when some foster parents chose the shy scared little girl on the end of the line of orphans. She didn’t know that there was a twin waiting for her, or that she was to be the whipping girl for her foster mom. She didn’t understand human emotions or their natural consequences, but always tried to be so good that she didn’t need punishing. She never succeeded.
Her foster twin used the situation, and learned to use the easy way out of any circumstances. Maggie had not only to withstand all of the abuse, she had to take care of the drug addict her sister became, and to raise her niece as her daughter. Consequences from these circumstances followed Maggie all through her life.

206 pages, Paperback

Published August 25, 2022