Marilyn Peterson Haus
A Little About Marilyn
Marilyn Peterson Haus spent her childhood playing with her twin brother-- jumping in the haymow, feeding corncobs to the pigs, exploring the woods behind the granary--on their farm in western Minnesota. She learned to read and write in a one-room school set in the midst of a sea of corn and oats. To go to junior high and high school, she rode a rickety yellow school bus seven miles to the nearest town (population 700), which had sprung up next to the railroad as it sliced through the tallgrass prairie while heading west. Marilyn's own journey took her in the opposite direction, and after attending Augsburg College (now Augsburg University) in Minneapolis, she and her husband moved east and settled in western Massachusetts, where she raised three children, earned an MBA and launched a successful business career.
Marilyn wrote her first book, Half of a Whole: My Fight for a Separate Life, because she needed to make sense of both the ecstasy and the tragedy of growing up with her deeply troubled twin. She wanted the reader to feel the intensity of their childhood bond, and her despair as she watched him lose control of his mind. She wanted to portray the depth of her devotion to her fundamentalist evangelical family, and the pain of breaking away when the religious strictures and favoritism towards her brother became too much. And she wanted to depict the courage it took to confront her mother, and the joy she found in reconciling with her twin. But her ultimate goal was to unravel her intricate story, piece it together again, and share her discoveries with readers who might identify with her experience.
When she isn't writing, Marilyn can be found shoveling compost around the coneflowers, hostas, and day lilies that overflow her many flower gardens. She dissects books with her book club and plays mahjong with her friends--occasionally, but not very often, winning a game. When the snow piles up in the nearby woodland, she and her husband put on their X-country skis and glide down the trails. She never stops marveling at the broad shoulders of the Berkshire Hills, grateful for the contrast they present to the gloriously wide Minnesota horizon of her childhood.
.jpeg)
Half of a Whole explores the intimate bond between a twin brother and sister, the cruel consequences that occur when one of them becomes mentally ill, and the courage required to break away when love is not enough.
Just when Marilyn Peterson Haus thought she had escaped life as the child of born-again farmers on the Minnesota plains, her twin brother’s manic violence catapults her back to the fissures of her childhood. Half of a Whole is the haunting chronicle of her twin’s encroaching mental illness, her mother’s blatant favoritism, and the stultifying strictures of her family’s religious zealotry. Sentence by sentence, she battles to break free from a painful past and live life on her own terms.
