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Envy Rots The Bones - A Psychological Thriller

Hello, I’m Nina Blakeman. I’m coming to you from Tulia, Texas and I’d like to discuss with you my second book from the Faye Davis series, Envy Rots the Bones.

Now, this title is actually from Proverbs 14. It tells us that a peaceful heart is the life of the body, but it is envy that is corrosive enough to rot bone.

In this book discontentment and want are ever present. But then I asked myself, isn’t it natural to have want companionship, have the things to meet our needs, for us to feel safe and secure?

That’s what was going through the mind of Dr. Todd Davis when he married Faye Brady.  But decisions we make can also affect others.  

Todd fathered twin girls with Annette Dolce, as learned in The Blow-up Man, but he never made an honest woman of Annette, so when he made that life-long commitment to Faye, envy ensued, a trait that quickly spread to the twin, Emma Davis.

The daughter’s invidious feelings mimic those of her mother, those of betrayal . . . betrayal of the real family. Hatred takes in root in the form of Louisiana voodoo. When the teenage girl feels like her voice isn’t being heard, she calls out into the night, with words such as these,

Binding, choking, gurgling, drowning

Listen to the words I’m sounding

Cries of pain were muffled here

Despair and anguish resulted in tears

Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, don’t spare your lance

Don’t bring to Faye a second chance

Punish, ridicule, rape, condemn

Spew on her your putrid phlegm

Take her spirit, take her fight

Bed her down for eternal night

These are harsh, harsh words. Where could such hate from? Being the daughter of Annette Dolce, it’s what Emma and Ella grew up around. But in the age of offensive social media posts, (e.g., bullying, and trolling) one doesn’t have to look too hard to find digressive and extraneous verbiage. The question here is what child takes to it and what child does not. As previously mentioned, Emma has a twin, Ella Davis. Her personality is one of quietness, possessing the splash of stripped-down wallpaper or the assertiveness of a doormat.

In the book, an elderly widow who is looking after Ella discusses the idea of a person’s free will regardless of their upbringing. To this, Ella responds, “When you come from lies, deceit, and trickery, it’s in your blood. You possess it and are prone to acting on it, and then you pass it on.  Envy lights the fire. It’s stronger than free will. It triggers the genes-the ones you inherit when you are conceived by dirty sex. It makes you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. It rots the bones.”

In Ella’s interpretation of the matter, she inherently capable of the atrocities of her mother and her twin. It brings to mind the cliché, “It’s the quiet ones you have to look out for.”

As for Emma, is she really a disciple of Louisiana voodoo, or is she just what she uses to control her more- weak-willed peers? It was a topic that took me on the road to Louisiana, but that a story for another day, but I will tell you this . . . I came home with a Voodoo doll. From High Plains Public Radio, I’m Nina Blakeman.