Local Author Releases Debut Novel as a Cautionary Tale for Her Children

By Barbara Kay

Two years ago, on the ride home from a Memorial Day weekend trip, the conversation between Melissa Trombetta and her son, Luke, meandered to discussing their biggest fears.

For Luke it was the fear of drowning; for Trombetta it was being physically assaulted.

With her daughter, Elsa, a college student far from home, and despite being equipped with Life360 and a Birdie, a personal safety alarm, on her phone, Trombetta didn’t want her to entrust her life with those services alone.

“If you put all your eggs in one basket and you’re like, ‘I’ve got my phone, I’ve got my Birdie, I’m safe.’ What if that gets knocked out of your hand? It’s buried at the bottom of your bag? You’re completely vulnerable,” Trombetta said.

Before the end of that holiday weekend, Trombetta began writing what would become her first book, a novel titled “I Thought I Knew.” It was released on Apr. 2, in time for the start of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Trombetta, an Ossining resident and the head of business insights for Viatris Inc., details the story of a graduating college student, Nicole, and her journey after being sexually assaulted.

“I Thought I Knew” was, in part, meant as a “wake-up call” for Elsa, about 700 miles away.

Elsa said she is proud of her mother’s first book.

“After all the hours she has put into her book, to finally see it be published and released I could not be more excited for her,” she said.

Trombetta dedicated “I Thought I Knew” to “The Elsas: “May you forever be empowered to be strong and confident in your convictions and decisions.”

“Someone having control over me, how I’m not going to be in control of a situation was always in the back of my mind and still is,” Trombetta said. “Even though I don’t want to be put in that situation, I have the confidence and could put up a fight to get away.”

“The book shows how creative my mom is and the amazing things she can do when she puts her mind to something,” Luke wrote about his mother.

Although Trombetta didn’t consider herself a writer, she wrote 100 pages and found a writing coach, Libby Gill.

“She had such a passion and seemed so driven to get the book done, which a lot of people who want to write a book don’t,” said Gill, who worked with Trombetta for six months and whose own book, “Malibu Summer,” is being released on May 21.

Caroline Leavitt, a New York Times bestselling author whose new book “Days of Wonder” comes out this month as well, was Trombetta’s editor. “I Thought I Knew” was completed in January.

Nicole Doherty, the protagonist in Trombetta’s novel, is a member of the graduating class of the fictitious upstate Wheeler College in 1995, and is preparing for her move to the city, where she’ll have her own apartment and a new job. But her enthusiasm is curbed when she is sexually assaulted only steps from the safety of her dorm, changing her forever.”

“Nicole’s trying to make (the assault) go away. She’s out of Wheeler, and is thinking ‘out of sight, out of mind. I’m just going to make this go away and focus on this journey and it’s going to be old news for me,’” Trombetta explained. “Sort of compartmentalizing and it never went away. That’s her challenge all the way through part two. She continued to make her world smaller because she was afraid to leave her apartment, afraid of people that were on the street. She was trying to protect herself but in doing that, not thriving.”

As Nicole self-isolates, she pushes her mother and sister, Jamie, away. Jamie pays little attention to her sibling, as she attempts to plan her wedding with her mother-in-law looming over her shoulder. Nicole doesn’t invite the two to her graduation, as she also has abrasions from the attack and fears them seeing.

“There are parts of it where (Jamie) realizes her sister is off but they kind of drifted apart and she thinks it must just be the stress of her having graduated school,” Trombetta said. “She doesn’t dig into it, she’s so self-absorbed at this point. Nicole is also protective of this; she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Trombetta’s mother had taken a self-defense class as part of her dissertation 30 years ago, and encouraged Trombetta to take it as well. The class – Model Mugging Self Defense, which is geared toward women and “provides students the greatest impact in personal safety and overcoming personal fears of being assaulted through role model mastery,” its website states.

“What Model Mugging teaches you is this inner power that can’t be taken away,” Trombetta said of the course. “If I drop my phone, I’ve got other things in my arsenal that I can do. It was one of the most transformational things that I’ve done in my life.”

Part of Nicole’s journey includes taking a Model Mugging class.

“Nicole goes into this class and it’s about the element of surprise with an assailant,” Trombetta explained. “The chances are they’re going to be able to overpower you, they’re going to be stronger, bigger. This is about how to get away and get to safety. It’s the element of surprise.

“Nicole doesn’t have to cower. She’s in an office environment in the ‘90s where it was nothing for a man to make sexual comments. But she’s able to come back at them, and not in a disrespectful way but in a way to disarm them.”

Having had 200 advanced readers, many came to Trombetta and said that “they felt heard.” It received a high rating of 4.63 out of 5 from 59 reviews on GoodReads as of Monday.

“They hadn’t told anyone or only told a person or two. They chose not to speak and they never had anyone articulate their feelings in the way that Nicole did,” she said. “They felt heard and empowered.”

Trombetta is hosting a book launch party this Thursday, Apr. 11 at Hudson Valley Books for Humanity, located at 67 Central Ave. in Ossining from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

She will also be signing books at three different Barnes & Noble locations: at the Palisades Center in West Nyack on Apr. 21; at the Cortlandt Town Center in Mohegan Lake on Apr. 27; and at the store in Hartsdale on May 4. All signings begin at 1 p.m.

“I Thought I Knew” is also available on Amazon.