Authors Interviewing Characters: Holly May Cormier

A Conversation With Memphis Monroe 

On Trauma Bonds, Breaking Cycles, and Finding Freedom

In this imagined character interview, Memphis Monroe speaks candidly about surviving a toxic, trauma-bonded relationship, the cities that shaped her resilience, and the difficult choices required to break cycles of generational abuse. Her reflections are raw, compassionate, and unflinching — offering insight not only into her fictional world, but into the lived realities of many women navigating survival, identity, and healing.

Note to readers: Memphis Monroe is a fictional character from Memphis, the debut women’s fiction thriller by author Holly May Cormier. Since its publication in September 2025, Memphis has received glowing reviews on Goodreads and critical praise from Kirkus Reviews, earning recognition for its emotionally charged storytelling and exploration of domestic abuse, deception, and survival.

The story continues in Memphis: Reckoning, currently in progress as the highly anticipated sequel. While the first novel chronicles Memphis’s fight to survive, book two will explore the aftermath — truth, legacy, and the cost of reclaiming one’s voice.

Memphis is currently available free on Kindle Unlimited, inviting readers to step into a story that is both deeply personal and powerfully universal.

A woman on the run. A family steeped in secrets. A past that refuses to stay buried.

In a run-down Nashville suburb, soft-spoken choir singer Memphis Monroe has spent ten years trapped in a violent marriage to Johnny Freedman — heir to a hard-drinking family that crushes its women into silence. Urged by her mother, Doris, to secure a future at any cost, Memphis has learned to endure. Until the night Johnny goes too far.

With her young son, Michael, Memphis flees Tennessee in her husband’s prized Mustang, racing toward Los Angeles in search of safety and freedom. Along the way, she begins to reclaim the voice she was forced to silence and uncovers truths about her family that were buried long before her marriage began.

But escape is never clean. When Johnny — and Doris — track her down, Memphis is pulled into a deadly reckoning where loyalty, survival, and truth collide. This time, running isn’t an option.

Question One: What would you say to women living in a trauma-bonded, toxic relationship?

Memphis:
Get out sooner rather than later.

I know that’s not the answer people want to hear, because when you’re in it, leaving feels impossible. But I truly believe this: victims of domestic violence are often empaths. We feel deeply. We love deeply. And because of that, we tend to attract sociopaths and narcissists like moths to flame. They sense it in us — our patience, our forgiveness, our willingness to wait.

And wait we do.

We keep waiting for the person we met in the beginning to come back. The charming one. The gentle one. The one who made us feel chosen, safe, adored. We tell ourselves, He’s still in there. If I just love him harder. If I just stay calm. If I just don’t provoke him.

But here’s the hardest truth I had to learn: that person never comes back. He was never real to begin with. And you will waste years — sometimes your entire life — trying to resurrect someone who only existed to hook you.

What breaks my heart is how much life waits on the other side of leaving. New friends. Chosen family you didn’t even know existed yet. Opportunities. Joy. Your gifts — the ones you buried just to survive. But you will never access any of it while your nervous system is constantly in fight-or-flight. You cannot bloom in a burning house.

Healing requires calm. Safety. Stillness. And you don’t even realize how loud the chaos is until you finally step away from it. Leaving doesn’t mean you failed. It means you chose yourself. And that choice changes everything.

Question Two: What do you love about Nashville, Tennessee?

Memphis:
Nashville is complicated for me — but I do love it.

I love the people first and foremost. There’s a warmth there, a familiarity. Folks look you in the eye. They ask about your mama. They remember your name. Music isn’t just entertainment in Nashville — it’s the lifeblood. It spills out of bars, churches, back porches. Everybody’s got a story, and most of them come with a melody.

There’s history everywhere. You feel it in the streets, in the old houses, in the way time seems to move a little slower. And of course, there’s Elvis. Knowing that someone like him once walked those same roads — chasing sound, chasing freedom — how could you not love that?

Nashville has soul. It has grit. It has beauty. The sunsets are soft and golden, and there’s something sacred about Southern evenings — cicadas humming, front doors open, the world exhaling.

But Nashville is also tradition-heavy. Reputation matters. Appearances matter. And sometimes, those expectations can feel like chains, especially for women.

Question Three: What do you love about Los Angeles, California?

Memphis:
Los Angeles saved me.

I didn’t move here chasing fame — I moved here to escape my husband. To start over. To protect my son from becoming like his daddy. That was the truth of it.

What I love most about LA is the space — physical and emotional. The ocean reminds you that the world is bigger than your pain. Bigger than your past. You can breathe here. You can disappear and reinvent yourself without being haunted by who you used to be.

It’s forward-thinking. Liberal. There’s room for difference. For healing. For saying, This happened to me, and I’m still worthy.

And practically speaking? It’s a big city with opportunity. You don’t have to walk an hour to reach a supermarket. You don’t have to rely on anyone to survive. You can work, build, create. You can stand on your own two feet.

LA taught me that independence isn’t cold — it’s empowering. And for a woman coming out of control and abuse, that realization is everything.

Question Four: How do you break generational patterns?

Memphis:
You break them by walking away — even when it feels wrong to do so.

I had to go off on my own and blaze my own trail. That road is lonely. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. But your inner compass knows the truth long before your mind catches up. Mine did. It kept whispering, This isn’t right. This isn’t love. This isn’t the life meant for you.

Sometimes what feels familiar isn’t safe — it’s just learned. Obligation can masquerade as loyalty. Tradition can disguise control.

My mother would have seen me as “taken care of” with Johnny — provided for, married, respectable — no matter the cost. But I knew I could stand on my own two feet. Especially here in Los Angeles.

Having your own job matters. Following your dreams isn’t optional — it’s mandatory. Because our children learn by watching, not listening. And I refuse to teach my son that survival means silence, or that love requires suffering.

Breaking generational trauma — abuse, alcoholism, control — requires courage. It requires choosing discomfort now over devastation later. It means saying, This ends with me.

And that choice? That’s how legacies change.

Question Five: Why do you love to sing — and who is your favorite band?

Memphis:
I’ve loved singing for as long as I can remember.

As a child, I sang in the church choir. It was the first place I ever felt seen without being looked at too closely. I’ve always been shy by nature — observant, quiet, careful with my words. But when I sing, that shyness disappears. Something else takes over.

When I sing, another part of me opens up. A braver part. A truer part. It’s the only time I feel completely and utterly alive — like my body finally knows what it was built for. Singing lets me tell the truth without explaining it. I don’t have to justify my pain or soften it. I can just feel it, release it, and let it move through me.

Music gave me a voice long before I knew how to use one.

My biggest inspiration today is Fleetwood Mac. I love every era, every song — I own all their albums. Their music is raw, emotional, messy, honest. It’s about love and betrayal and longing and survival — the things people rarely say out loud.

And Stevie Nicks… I admire her endlessly. Her voice, her mystique, her style. She didn’t shrink herself to be palatable. She turned pain into poetry and wore her scars like silk. She made space for women to be powerful and wounded at the same time — and that matters to me.

When I sing, I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m trying to survive. And somehow, that’s where I feel most free.

Closing Thoughts

Memphis Monroe’s story is one of reckoning — with love, with place, with inherited pain. Her answers remind us that healing is not passive. It’s an act of defiance. Of self-trust. Of hope.

And sometimes, the bravest thing a woman can do is walk away from everything she was taught to want — and choose herself instead. Memphis by Holly May Cormier is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook. If you love women’s fiction thrillers with slow burn, found family, fame, music, breaking generational trauma cycles, domestic violence tropes, you’ll love this story. The author is currently writing the sequel which will be out in Fall 2026. 

For more information please visit www.hollymaycormier.com 

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing