Trisha McAfee completes third book in memoir trilogy

Trisha McAfee is a Scio native, wife and mother of seven. She is an artist and author of children’s books and adult thrillers. She also is a photographer, beekeeper and gardener. A graduate of Grand Canyon University, McAfee earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral health science with an emphasis on trauma. She said her goal is to help others.

McAfee recently completed the third book in her trilogy, “Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard.”

The first two books, “Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard” and “Breaking the Silence,” focus on McAfee’s own traumatic childhood. The third book, “Still Standing,” shifts from exposing abuse to focusing on resilience, healing and personal growth after trauma. The book explores how survivors live with trauma while reclaiming identity and a sense of self. McAfee emphasizes that healing is possible, often gradual and may require support. She also underscores that survivors do not have to feel ashamed. Concluding the trilogy, the book affirms that trauma does not define a person’s future and highlights the strength it takes to endure, recover and move forward.

If there is one message McAfee hopes readers take away, she said, it is that “books can serve as both mirrors and guides.”

“They can help readers feel seen, spark meaningful dialogue, and encourage reflection across generations, inviting not only engagement with the stories themselves, but deeper conversations within homes and communities,” McAfee said.

The trilogy is available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

McAfee also has begun a new fiction project, saying that writing her own story did not quiet her mind.

“I chose to write Tappan Lake because telling the truth did not quiet the questions, it sharpened them,” McAfee said. “The ‘Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard’ trilogy was necessary work, but it was also emotionally exhaustive. Healing, I learned, doesn’t end when a story is told; it simply changes form.”

She said fiction gave her freedom beyond her own experiences.

“Tappan Lake allowed me to explore the patterns beneath harm, the systems, the complicity, the way communities learn to look away, without being bound to my own life alone,” she said. “It let me ask harder questions. Writing fiction wasn’t an escape from my earlier work; it was an evolution of it.”

“Tappan Lake: Beneath the Surface” is a thriller that begins with the discovery of a body near the lake and a confused, bloodied woman emerging from the woods. It is the first book in a planned trilogy that will be released throughout 2026.

“Tappan Lake: Beneath the Surface” is available now through Amazon.