1 in 3 Women Experience Domestic Violence. Fiction Can Help (Exclusive)

Perhaps you’ve spotted the purple ribbons, noticed the literature declaring October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. For fiction fans, domestic violence has become a theme we’re accustomed to seeing. We’ve all read the books, watched the stories play out on our TVs and on movie screens. Our legal system deals with thousands of domestic abuse cases a day; and yet we still feel compelled to explore this issue in a fictional setting.

Which begs the question: is fiction telling us something about domestic violence that the law isn’t? As both a thriller writer and a lawyer who has served as a legal advocate for victims of abuse, I’ve learned that the answer is “yes.” 

The legal system can often give a voice to those in need. It can be a symbol of justice, fairness; conjuring images of balanced scales cast in bronze, of lofty courtrooms presided over by robed judges with gavels in hand. But in the case of domestic violence, it’s easy for victims’ stories to get lost in the rigidity of courtroom proceedings, in the pre-fabricated forms, and endless lists of case numbers. It’s a sad truth that I witnessed firsthand as a legal advocate. 

I vividly recall the first interview I conducted in my new role as an advocate at a clinic for victims of domestic violence. My potential client stepped tentatively into the conference room — a space no bigger than a glorified closet with a small round table and a few mismatched chairs — and took a seat across from me, perching on the edge of her chair, her purse clutched in her hands on her lap, fingers fiddling nervously with the clasp. I’d undergone training for this very moment. I’d learned about how domestic violence is cyclical by nature — a cycle that is difficult and dangerous for many women to break — and how to respond to clients’ stories with sensitivity and compassion, never with judgment. 

I was instructed on how to let the women who came into our clinic tell their stories in their own time and in their own way, while also asking the right questions to elicit the information we’d need to help them navigate the legal system. I had a pen and a clean notepad in front of me, but I wouldn’t be taking notes as she spoke, only to jot down important dates and facts that I knew I’d later need to recall; I’d placed a box of tissues on the table between us, and a filled a jug with fresh water. I thought I was ready. I wasn’t. 

When the woman seated across from me finally spoke, she told me a story of horrific abuse that spanned over 10 years. Her voice, which was slight and wavering when she began, gained strength as she recounted the psychological, physical and financial abuse she suffered at the hands of a man she once trusted, someone she thought had loved her. And when she was finished, I explained how we, at the clinic, would try to help, the legal recourse we’d seek on her behalf. In my head, I was already drafting the motions, whittling down the story of her life to its barest bones — dates and times, the hard, factual evidence that could be used in court. 

Even then, I knew it wouldn’t be doing her story justice, that there was no way to capture the enormity of the hardship she’d faced in the brief moments I might be granted to speak on her behalf before a judge. But in order to get her the legal protections she was seeking, I had to work within the parameters of the justice system. I had to fill out the forms and file the requisite paperwork. A decade of abuse tidied into neat paragraphs. The woman thanked me profusely for my time, she nodded enthusiastically as we set up an appointment for her to return to the clinic to get the process started. But she never came back. 

It took me some time to understand what had happened — that my client wasn’t ready to face her abuser in court; that perhaps all she needed at that time in her life was a safe space to tell her story, to know that she was heard — and to accept that she was not going to find that inside a courtroom.

There are many victims just like that first client out in the world. Seeking legal recourse can be a dangerous and intimidating experience, especially for victims of abuse. In fact, the most dangerous time for a survivor of abuse can be when they try to leave their abuser, when they threaten the pattern of power and control their partner has established over them. As a result, many victims fall through the cracks and their stories are never heard.  And what is heard inside a courtroom is rarely the full story. The sheer volume of cases that need to be heard by the courts on any given day renders it impossible. 

The legal system reduces real, lived experiences to dates and facts, checked boxes and penal code violations. It doesn’t leave room for the nuances and layered complexities of domestic violence. Nowhere on a petition for an order of protection is there a space to describe all the little ways you were made to feel worthless, the slow chipping away of your self-esteem until you believed you deserved the abuse you suffered. 

But fiction can give a voice to victims of domestic violence where the legal system doesn’t leave space for it. There, we can tell the untold stories, unbound by the confines of the law. Which is exactly what I aimed to do in my newest novel, The Wives Of Hawthorne Lane. 

This book is fun and entertaining — and deliciously twisty — but it also speaks to many of the harder-hitting issues surrounding domestic violence, including the different forms abuse can take, precursors to intimate partner violence (such as stalking and harassment) and the lasting impact these issues have on women and their families. There are discussion questions included at the end of the book to help guide readers through some of the more difficult topics, and the purple color scheme on the front cover is a nod to the purple ribbons used to promote awareness of domestic violence and signify the courage of survivors.

While I understand that domestic violence can be difficult to read about, even in a fictional setting, I felt it was an important topic to discuss given its prevalence. According to the World Health Organization, one in three women will be the victim of some form of violence in their lifetimes. It’s a staggering statistic when you really stop to think about it. One in three. And perhaps it’s this ubiquity that explains why it’s become such a common theme in fictional works, especially in the thriller space. 

Domestic violence frightens us because it’s relatable, it shatters our sense of safety and security. We aren’t talking about vengeful ghosts or monsters under the bed. We’re talking about something real, something that could be going on behind the closed doors of our friends and neighbors. However, domestic violence is more than entertainment, it’s more than a shock-value tactic. It’s a real and systemic problem that deserves realistic representation in fiction. My background working as a victims’ advocate has given me a unique perspective as a writer, and I wanted to use that experience to say something important. Something meaningful. While all of the characters in The Wives Of Hawthorne Lane and the situations they find themselves in are entirely fictional, I drew on my real experiences, working with real victims, to create their stories. 

The legal system doesn’t have all of the answers to domestic violence, and neither does fiction, but my hope is that this book starts a conversation. That it leaves readers questioning what they think they know about domestic violence and how we can all make a change going forward. I hope someday we can do better than one in three.

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The Wives of Hawthorne Lane is available now, wherever books are sold.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.